‘Guilty’ is written by Laura Elliot and it’s a great read if you’re someone who enjoys tv dramas such as Broadchurch, Doctor Foster or Liar. It’s a psychological thriller/mystery, set in a town where people talk and sometimes the wrong assumptions are made.
We first hear from Constance, a 13 year old girl, who’s part of a secret gang. She goes out alone one night, not telling anyone what she’s doing and well, she’s never seen again. This is just the first chapter though, the story then moves onto Karl, Constance’s Uncle.
Karl and Constance were close, he was always the one she’d run to when she wasn’t getting along with her parents and because of this Karl knows that she’d been up to something, but isn’t sure what. Suspicions start to rise over Karl and Constance’s relationship and this isn’t helped when journalist Amanda Bowe starts writing reports about him, convincing everyone that he is at the fault of Constance’s disappearance. Amanda is having an affair with a local police officer and therefore has a secret knowledge into what is going on in the case. Releasing this knowledge through her articles, people start to become more suspicious of Karl, even his own family, and he’s left abandoned to cope with it all by himself.
Although the first part of the story is mainly focused around Karl, the story then moves on to six years later when we start to learn more about Amanda’s life. It is here when Amanda’s son goes missing, the tables have turned and instead of writing about a child that’s gone missing, she’s living it.
The book is told in four parts, I liked this because it almost made it feel as if you’re reading four different stories, however they’re all related to one another and well I suppose it’s like watching a tv series with something different happening in each episode, seeing what’s happening from different characters points of view. It makes the read more wholesome and gives you a wider picture of this great story.
The story is quite hard to follow at first although, I may have thought this having read it quite sporadically to start with, meaning that I tended to forget who was who and what their back story was. Once I got into the book though, I found it hard to put down. The second part of the book was definitely more interesting, as by then we know why everyone is where they are, or at least we know part of the story. From then on you’ll want to keep reading to find out what happens to this bunch of people. Will they find what they need or will the past catch up with them?
The story begins Michael telling his wife, Louise that he’s been having an affair with her younger sister. Feeling betrayed, Louise leaves and heads for their other home in the Cotswolds. At the same time as this, Michael is facing arrest, time in prison and being charged for inside trading, tax evasion and theft from his employees’ funds. Michael and Louise have two children, Brooke and Dominic.
Jean runs a bookshop, but not any old bookshop, it’s one he calls a ‘literary apothecary’, he prescribes books for his customers to sooth their troubled souls. People come to visit him at his floating shop, a boat on the river Seine. Jean converted the boat himself and reflects one day that it is ‘a common misconception that booksellers looked after books. They look after people.’
Catherine at first thinks that Simon has gone for his morning run before work as per usual and thinks nothing of it when he’s not there, when she wakes up. However when she realises that he never made it into work that day, she knows that something is not right. Thoughts run around her head, was it something she did? Is Simon in trouble? How could he just up and leave her and their children?
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