Rachel Doe is an accountant, thirty-something, single, career-oriented, London-living and lonely. ‘A vacuum’ is how she describes herself. A long-term relationship has ended; she craves love, friendship, and the emotional warmth which her widowed father, locked in a straitjacket of loneliness and suburban conformism, cannot provide. She longs not just to receive love but to give it as well, and when she meets Ivy Wiseman, a model at the life drawing class which Rachel attends, they strike up an immediate, warm and affectionate friendship. Ivy is a little older than Rachel, unconventional to a degree, a drop-out and a bit of a drifter, who cleans offices for a living. She is outgoing and positive, possessed of immense charm and vitality, a contrast to the withdrawn and emotionally timid Rachel. She moves into Rachel’s flat and takes Rachel down to her parents’ farm. Rachel falls in love with the farm and the beauty of its ancient buildings and rural setting near the sea with its own lake; and with Ivy’s warm and welcoming parents, hippy-ish Grace and traditional farmer Ernest. From them Rachel learns a little of Ivy’s past; there is an ex-husband, Carl, son of a German POW who was billeted on the farm during the war. Carl and Ivy had two children, but the daughter was drowned in the lake as a child when she was attacked by one of the swans who nest there, an event which caused Ivy to go completely off the rails. She now never sees her husband or her son Sam. Ivy, Grace and Ernest are desperate to establish contact with Sam, but all their attempts to communicate have been unsuccessful. Could Rachel, using her professional connections and savoir-faire, act as an intermediary? Her love for Ivy and her family and gratitude for their affection means that she cannot do otherwise.
However, someone has it in for Carl, who is now a circuit judge; he has been receiving death-threatening emails, his car tyres have been slashed, and he has been sent dead rats. He is assigned police protection in the person of Detective Sergeant Donald Cousins, unusually thoughtful and reflective for a policeman. The most likely suspects are people whom Carl has come across in his professional life, perhaps a defendant who believes he or she has been unjustly convicted, or a victim angered by what he perceives as a wrongful acquittal or a too lenient sentence. Cousins tracks down the most likely suspect: an ex-convict called Terry Blaker.
This is a one-off novel, without either of the continuing characters from Fyfield's two main series, Helen West or Sarah Fortune. There are only seven main characters (eight if you stretch a point and include young Sam) and three of them are ruled out as suspects while two of the others are not serious contenders. Although Fyfield provides a certain amount of ambiguity as to the identity of the perpetrator until the end, the eventual revelation is not much of a surprise. Instead, the core of the novel is the psychological study of how an emotionally vulnerable person can be manipulated and exploited, and how a so-called desire for justice can in reality be a desire for revenge. This is a serious and thoughtful novel which examines contemporary issues such as the role of judges and juries in the criminal process, particularly relevant now that the threat of terrorism means that the balance between civil liberties and public safety is finer than ever. Not light entertainment but worth reading for the issues it raises.
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Radmila May
Other books by Frances Fyfield: A Question of Guilt, Shadows on the Mirror, Trial by Fire, Shadow Play, Perfectly Pure and Good, A Clear Conscience, Without Consent, Blind Date, Staring at the Light, Undercurrents, The Nature of the Beast, Seeking Sanctuary, Looking Down, Safer than Houses. Writing as Frances Hegarty: The Playroom, Half Light, Let's Dance