They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but where's the fun in that?Artist Sally Mellors has planned the perfect revenge, but with two secret agents on her tail, and her best friends running the police investigation, getting away with murder is going to be tricky...
Everybody loves Sally. She's a funny, generous, warm hearted friend, without a nasty bone in her body.
Isn't she?
Unknown to her friends, Sally's discovered another side to herself, cool headed and relentless, as she hunts down the three men who killed her husband. But Sally's not the only one with an interest in the trio. Unknown to her, two agents have arrived in town, urgently hunting a missing man and his diary, which could blow their organisation apart. Their best leads are the very men that Sally's hunting, and she's getting in the way...
The inspiration behind A Thoughtful Woman.
The justice system is an intriguing beast. We expect it to be fair, which is why we allow it to resolve our disputes instead of simply taking revenge ourselves, but watch an individual case play out in court and it can seem more like a high stakes game between lawyers than the pursuit of absolute truth. And if you think it's a game, do you still accept the result if you lose? Is that still justice? At what point will a perfectly normal, perfectly decent person snap, and what happens when they do? Is it possible to plunge into the darkness of revenge and remain the normal, decent happy person you were before you started? Sally Mellors is about to find out.
Review
When the courts fail and two women take justice into their own hands, the line between right and wrong starts to blur.
Sally Mellors befriends Emma Nixon when the drunk driver who killed Emma's husband walks away scot-free. A few years before, his father did the same thing after killing Sally's husband, and was acquitted with the help of the same lawyer and crooked cop. For the deaths of their husbands, Sally and Emma are going to make them pay.
While this story started quite slowly, once the revenge killing begins, the plot speeds up and simply won't stop. As we follow the police investigation, we're blindingly aware that killing is wrong and we're struck by the callousness of Emma and Sally, and yet a small part of us wants them to get away with it. The dual perspective maintains this tension as Sally's friend Peregrin heads the investigation in classic murder mystery style even as she plots her next move.
The tension is ratcheted somewhat higher by two mysterious agents searching for a missing man, but in the end it seemed like they were only there for exposition. No major characters ever become aware of their motivations nor do they have any impact on the plot whatsoever. They come, they spy, they sneak, they talk, and then are recalled to headquarters and thus could well have been cut.
There is also plot-relevant BDSM that may not be to everyone's tastes and felt a little gratuitous. A good portion of this could have been skimmed over or shortened without affecting the tension.
In the end, I was surprised by how much I could root for a killer, even while disliking them. While Emma is hesitant and plays more of a supporting role, Sally is cold as ice and chillingly calculating. Their motivations are solid even if their alibis are not, and I was surprised by how much they got away with - though perhaps I'm biased when coming from a place of knowledge, unlike poor Peregrin. I'd be interested to read more about Sally Mellors.
Four stars.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via Rachel's Random Resources; all opinions are my own.
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