The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman

Hostage situation…

😀 😀 😀 😀

Early one morning, a diverse bunch of people head for the Tuckbox café. Most of them are just looking for a caffeine fix, but one is carrying a loaded shotgun. Soon a man lies dead on the floor and some of the strangers find themselves as hostages of the killer. Outside, as the police scramble to get their armed response units in position, their negotiator, Eliza, begins the long job of trying to calm things down and resolve the situation without any more people getting hurt. And in the café, as the initial shock and terror wears off, the hostages and their captor begin to develop an uneasy rapport…

This book is getting rave reviews all over the place and, although I wasn’t as blown away by it as many other people, I can certainly see why. The quality of the writing is excellent, and the beginning in particular is brilliantly done, quickly building up an atmosphere of extreme tension and concern for the characters whom the author has already managed to make us care about.

After this explosive start, the book then settles down to a slow reveal of the background of each of the characters, especially of the killer and his victim. This is when it began, slightly, to drag for me. The essential problem is that all of the characters – yes, even the killer – are such awfully nice people who have been dealt unfair hands by fate. I liked them all, but oh, how I longed for someone’s stiff upper lip to fail – a touch of hysteria, a blazing row, or a dramatic but futile show of heroism. At the beginning, when there are kids among the hostages and we don’t know just how unstable the killer might be, the tension is palpable, but this disappears when it soon becomes clear that the immediate horrors are over and the hostage situation is merely an opportunity to bring together some disparate life stories.

Charity Norman

And mostly they’re, dare I say it, not very interesting stories. The career woman undergoing IVF and hiding her pain under a brittle veneer of professional distance. The homeless man, brought to this state by his own weaknesses but with a heart of gold and a limitless well of sympathy for others. The kind, motherly care worker who uses her common sense and knowledge of the darkness that can lurk in the human soul to connect with the killer. And the killer himself, product of an unhappy childhood ruled over by a controlling, gaslighting step-father. I may be making it sound much duller than it is – I did like all the characters and I did enjoy hearing their stories, especially the harrowing one of Mutesi the care worker which is very well done; but it was all too pat somehow. Here we all are, each with our own troubles, locked in this room, so why don’t we swap stories and all find some kind of redemption and turn this horror into a deeply meaningful moment of affirmation of life? It all felt a bit Harold Fry, if you know what I mean – another book that other people adored and I didn’t. And I do feel someone should have said no to the last chapter, which is quite frankly sickeningly saccharine and with the same kind of mystical twaddle that made me want to hurl Harold Fry at the wall.

Hmm, this review has turned out more critical than I intended. I enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it quite highly, especially to people who enjoy feel-good novels, since despite the killing that’s what this is. But for those looking for realism or a thriller, this is not that book. Horses for courses. This horse provides a nice, comfortable, sedate ride, not a wild mane-flying gallop. Bill, not Shadowfax.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Atlantic Books.

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