This is the first in a new crime series, featuring DCI Serena Flanagan. Flanagan has just returned to duty after having treatment for breast cancer. However, one of her old cases is about to return and haunt her as she has never forgotten the events that happened seven years ago when a twelve year old boy, Ciaran Devine, confessed to murdering his foster father.
He said his older brother Thomas had tried to stop him, but he was out of control. Seven years later, Ciaran’s release will set a new and even more deadly chain of events in motion.
Flanagan, then an ambitious Detective Sergeant, was involved in his confession and conviction but she has always felt that something was not right about the whole case.
Probation officer Paula Cunningham, reluctantly tasked with helping Ciaran re-enter society, also suspects there was more to this case than the police or the prosecutors uncovered. She wonders if Ciaran really committed the murder at all. His confession saved his brother Thomas from a lengthier sentence, and Cunningham sees the unnatural hold Thomas has over Ciaran.
When Serena and Paula discuss the case, the years of lies begin to unravel, leading to a truth stranger than anyone could have imagined.
The author, Stuart Neville has written six books to date and has won great acclaim for all of them particularly his first The Twelve. This is my first encounter with the Belfast born writer and I am normally not a great fan of this genre but I really got engrossed in this and will be seeking out his other novels.
Belfast is an interesting setting for the action as it has all the tensions of a previously divided city: although the younger generation has moved on from the troubles there are still remnants of the old partitions. The descriptions of locations struck a chord with my husband who has lived in Belfast so I felt even more involved with the location.
The author is a craftsman who has woven a story with strong believable characters into this backdrop and delivered a powerful, poignant book which has expanded my reading range and I thank him for this.
The book is published by Random House UK on 26th June in Hardback for £12.99
