The Darkest Lies – Barbara Copperthwaite, Bookouture, 2017
I turned to this book with high hopes, having recently read and loved a novel from the same publisher. I expected great things, and I’m delighted to say that with The Darkest Lies, Barbara Copperthwaite has very much delivered.
The novel opens in the aftermath of an attack on a young teenaged girl – so far, so standard. But what follows is anything but. The narrative is compelling and remarkably vivid, the confused interplay of grief and hatred and the desire to find out what has happened is presented so clearly that the reader is just a short step away from feeling the whole thing him or herself. The wide cast of characters are neatly drawn, with just enough information to create real, living human beings and not so much that one finds oneself distracted from the principal theme. The writing hits the sweet spot between elegant, such that on pausing, the reader can appreciate the skill that has gone into it, and functional, ensuring it never gets in the way of the plot.
And it’s the plot that is the real triumph of this novel. We’re used to seeing so many of those “a twist you won’t see coming” blurbs, we’re overwhelmed with “I couldn’t believe what happened on page blah-di-blah”, that when something comes along that really delivers this, it’s both a treat and a shock. And really, it’s not so much the twists that make this narrative so brilliant. It’s the way we’re led so carefully towards the truth, or truths, the way things we think we know take on secondary importance, only to rear up in all their vital horror pages later, and then recede as something else takes over. What Barbara Copperthwaite has created is a modern version of Christie’s novels of suspicion, where anyone can be a suspect or a victim, with all the psychological insight that the best of the genre can bring in the twenty-first century.
Looking forward to reading more from a remarkably talented author.