This was quite a page turner…it had me guessing, unguessing, then guessing again...more than once!
It's a thriller about a married psychiatrist, Alex, who has an affair with a patient. Which, of course, is wrong. Cue: a blackmailer, who, with evidence, can wreck Alex's career. For the reader, there are a number of candidates who qualify as the culprit, but Lanyon manages to divert your thinking more than a few times.
The problem for me was that the 53,000 word count wasn't quite adequate for the plot and number of prominent characters. The book needed more showing, rather than telling, in order to be able to get your teeth into any of those characters. They were a little one-dimensional. Whilst the ending was nice and tidy…it's always satisfying to have all threads tidied up…it was a little crammed. There was plenty to be learnt about the history of some of the characters and their depths just weren't explored. Another 10-15,000 words to cover that and give those characters some substance would have made this novel complete.
This author can tell a story, there's no doubt, and certainly has a way of grabbing your attention. A wobbly start, but there's great potential there.
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