Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes

‘I wanted to go home and lock the door and not open it again.’

This is the third novel from crime writer Elizabeth Haynes and for me this is her darkest yet. Annabel works as an analyst for the police. She is lonely, with just her cat Lucy for company at home, and a few visits a week to her housebound mum to separate her days. She works hard, and doesn’t have any other close relationships, seeing the friendships amongst others at work go on around her without being part of them, feeling rather disconnected.

Having made a grim discovery in the house next door to hers one day, she realises on her return to work that similar deaths are happening in an alarmingly high number in the locality, and takes this information to her bosses at the police station. Why are so many people dying alone at home, not being discovered for some time after their deaths? Though seeming unsuspicious and raising little interest at first– these are deaths after all, not murders, aren’t they? – not least a local journalist, Sam Everett.

Through other lonely, troubled voices that are heard briefly in the story, and primarily through Annabel, this novel examines loneliness and the vulnerability of it, whether society should do more for those living alone, making us question our duty to others, and it makes you wonder about both choosing to be alone and ending up that way. As the neighbour of someone who has been found dead and alone comments ‘I think it’s terrible that in this day and age nobody notices you’re gone…People should take more care of each other.’ This is not to say that the novel offers no hope in this regard; in fact there are people who demonstrate the very opposite and offer kindness and friendship just when it is most needed.

Haynes has created a cold, chilling character for the criminal in this novel. She takes us into his mind; we know that from the outside he looks just like anyone else, he goes to work, goes about his life, no one would know what else he does in private: ‘If you met me in the street I dare say you would not be unduly worried by my presence…’ But inside that twisted mind are the thoughts of man playing with the lives of others and relishing what he does, even believing he is helping them to escape, using his own particular methods: ‘You want to know how I do it, don’t you? I can imagine it, your fervent interest, your curiosity that others might describe as morbid: I can see it in the sparkle in your eyes. Well, ask me, then. Go on. I know you’re dying to…’ The language here is so apt – ‘morbid, dying to’ – in keeping with the subject matter of the book.

Elizabeth Haynes established herself as a must-read author for me with Into the Darkest Corner. This novel confirms her talent for getting to the heart of the darkest minds and imagining the awful horrors they might commit. She has crafted another compelling story, with characters that get under your skin, a mystery and investigation that keeps you turning the pages, and with a dark, creepy air pervading it all.

Published by Myriad Editions

You can follow the author on twitter @Elizjhaynes and visit her blog here.

My reviews of Into the Darkest Corner and Revenge of the Tide. 

Thanks to the publisher for kindly sending a copy of this novel to read and review. 

Three super reads! Don't they look good together!

Genie and Paul - Natasha Soobramanien

Genie and Paul is the debut novel from Natasha Soobramanien. Taking the French 18^th Century classic ‘Paul et Virginie’ by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as inspiration, the author has crafted a story about love of people and of places. It is May 2003, and a body is washed up on a beach on Rodrigues, the sister island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. Six weeks earlier, in March 2003, a tropical cyclone hit Rodrigues, and it wrought destruction. On the same night, in London, twenty-six-year-old Genie Lallan wakes up in hospital, having collapsed after a night in a club with her beloved brother Paul, who has now vanished. It seems that her more innocent nature has been tarnished in part by her drug-taking brother.

Through the numerous glimpses into their pasts as the story unfolds, we discover that Paul and Genie moved to Britain from Mauritius, and whilst Genie takes well to her new home, Paul just aches to be back in Mauritius.

The narrative is composed of three sections, relating first to Genie, then Paul, and finally them both. Within these sections, the stories from the present and the past, which recall various episodes in the lives of the two siblings, build to give the reader a fascinating, layered picture of them both, and of some of those around them. 

Often a character is asked by another to tell them their story, and I found this storytelling aspect a wonderful and particularly appealing element of this novel.

Genie and Paul reads like a fresh, original story of love, of shared memories and places that always feel like home to us. Soobramanien offers us a novel where the sense and evocation of place is key, and she writes with great insight as to how our bonds with those we are closest to shape our lives.

Published by Myriad Editions

Originally reviewed for We Love This Book

Thank you to them and to the publisher for providing a copy of this novel to read and review.