The Wrong House Book

A car pulls up outside a remote house, a car containing a dead old woman, and a younger woman who will say nothing in answer to anyone's questions. The woman in the house, Anna Miles, has her own secrets and part of the frustrations that afflict investigating officer, Chief Inspector Wilde, is the long slow process of getting Anna to tell everything she knows--it does not help that much of what Anna knows is more relevant than she thinks..."I've done all I can to help you," she said, "I don't know the girl; I don't know the Graham woman...I don't know why they turned up at my house or why I was damned stupid enough to go out to her when I should have just rung the police...""Miss Miles," he murmured, his voice so low that she could barely hear him. "Who were you expecting, if it wasn't Matthew Aubrete." This doom-laden psychological thriller manages an interesting range of effects--from page to page we move from rows about inheritance to the psychology of stalking to cults preaching ley-lines and apocalyptic dread and somehow it all hangs together, both at a literal level and in that more difficult quality, the consistent tone of the book. Elizabeth McGregor takes some interesting risks here; this is a difficult book to pin down because it contains within itself elements of several sorts of thriller. What makes it work is in large part the depth of the characterisation--we believe in both Anna and the vulnerable widower Wilde enough that we both care about, and believe in, what happens to them. --Roz KaveneyRead More