The Point of Rescue: Culver Valley Crime Book 3 - Softcover

Sophie Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340953233 ISBN 13: 9780340953235

Publisher: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 2008

Synopsis

The Point Of Rescue

About this title

Review

Sophie Hannah’s debut thriller novel, Little Face, immediately marked her out as a particularly penetrating and insightful practitioner of the psychological crime novel, with a skill for getting into the minds of her beleaguered characters, a skill she continued to polish in its successor, Hurting Distance. Her second book was a particular achievement, given that so many second novels fail to live up to the promise of their predecessors. And here is Sophie Hannah's third novel, The Point of Rescue, and it might be argued that it is her most accomplished book yet.

A woman is watching a report on television of the death of a mother and daughter; apparently both had died at the mother's hand. Also on the screen is the surviving member of the family, a widower described as Mark Bretherick. Watching with her husband, the woman, Sally, has to bite back the words that spring to her lips: this man is not Mark Bretherick! How does she know? Because she had enjoyed a brief sexual affair with the real possessor of that name some time before -- an affair (needless to say) she has not revealed to her husband. Sally is forced to hang on to her secret, and she anonymously informs the police that all is not as it appears to be in this case.

It is Sally's plight that so comprehensively engages the reader here, but readers of the earlier books by Sophie Hannah will be pleased to note the reappearance of her reliable copper Simon Waterhouse, who ensures that the sequences involving the investigation are quite as compelling as the those of a woman desperately trying to keep her indiscretion secret (while doing the right thing).

On the evidence of these three books, Sophie Hannah has a long career as a novelist ahead of her (perhaps to run in tandem with her alternative career as a poet). --Barry Forshaw

Review

For those who demand emotional intelligence and literary verve from their thrillers, Sophie Hannah is the writer of choice. THE POINT OF RESCUE, her third, combines a creepily irresistible page-turner with an exploration of motherhood's taboos (Guardian)

Tension, thy name is Sophie Hannah. In THE POINT OF RESCUE, murder, false identity and infidelity are thet tools Hannah deploys to create a plausible but edge-of-your-seat read (Independent)

The tension is screwed ever tighter until the final shocking outcome (Daily Express)

Hannah doesn't allow the tension to slacken for a second in this addictive, brilliantly chilling thriller. (Book of the Month, Marie Claire)

Sophie Hannah just gets better and better, with experience adding rocket fuel to her already high-octane yarns . . . Brilliantly cunning and entirely unpredictable (Guardian)

Sophie Hannah's ingenious, almost surreal mysteries are so intricately constructed that it's impossible to guess how they will end . . . A compelling and disquieting story, told with the author's usual panache (Sunday Telegraph)

Every so often a writer comes along whose freshness and originality blows the competition out of the water...Genuinely gripping, full of the unseen and yet fitting twists and turns that make good quality crime fiction such a pleasure (Yorkshire Post)

Brilliantly creepy (Red Magazine)

I'm surprised I had any nails left by the end of this addictive thriller (Eve)

This disturbing tale is a cut above the average crime thriller, with an intelligent and inventive plot that raises questions about identity, guilt and the taboo of unfulfilling motherhood (Psychologies)

Edition details

• Publisher: HODDER AND STOUGHTON
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0340953233
• ISBN 13: 9780340953235
• Binding: Paperback