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3.5 stars rounded up for an intricately plotted murder mystery. The first half of the book moved slowly while the author set up the plot and developed the characters. The book opens with a very pregnant mother with 3 children on a road in England. The car breaks down and the mother goes for a telephone. It is August, 1998 and she doesn't have a cell(mobile) phone. She tells her children that she'll be back. She doesn't come back and the 3 children go to find help. A policeman comes to their assistance. He takes them home to their dad. More than a week later her body is found. She has been murdered.
Their dad spirals into depression and leaves the children. Jack doesn't want his sisters to be taken in to care and decides to take care of them by burglarizing vacant homes and selling stolen items to a friend.
It is now 3 years later and Jack, while burglarizing a house he thought was vacant, discovers a knife exactly like the one used to murder his mother. This starts a chain of events that leads to discovery of the murderer.
Pros: The plot was intricate and the clues slowly lead the police, with Jack's help, to the murderer. The language describing the places and characters was very vivid.
Cons: The first half moved very slowly.
This book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2018, so I'm probably in the minority here.
Two quotes:
"Jack Bright's eyes were narrow as a smoker's and pale grey, as if all the colour had been cried out of them. They were divided by a single deep frown line that belonged to a man in his fifties with the cares of the world on his shoulders."
Detective Chief Inspector Marvel thinking about the murder: "Investigating a murder was like doing a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. The constant fingertip-feeling and testing and turning. The picking up and the putting down and the picking up again."
Thank You GRF Theresa who gave me this book when I visited England in 2018.