Read for the 2011 TBR Lite Reading Challenge.
I picked this book for the RIP challenge because the back listed it as a detective story, and I thought a straight mystery would round out my reading choices. And it’s true that it’s a detective story, but it’s not really a mystery.
You know as the story opens that Sarah Nash killed her husband, and is in jail for it. You also know that George Webb was the private detective that she hired to be sure that her husband’s mistress left on a plane to go home to Croatia, never to return to London again. What you don’t know is why.
The story is all about the whys – why George became a policeman and then was drummed out of the force and went private. Why his wife left him. Why Sarah cared so much that her husband would be returning to her after his mistress left. Why she killed him. And why George and Sarah end the book separated by her being in jail, but together in the lasting relationship that they both should have found the first time.
It’s a lovely book – all about human nature, and growing up, and growing to understand oneself. I’m not sorry I read it, but it definitely wasn’t RIP challenge material.