Pages: 272
Published: 8th February 2019
Genre: Mystery/General Fiction
Content warnings: Injury detail, sexual content, death of unborn baby
Pregnant Victoria Valbon was brutally murdered in an alley three weeks ago – and her killer hasn’t been caught.
Tonight is Stella McKeever’s final radio show. The theme is secrets. You tell her yours, and she’ll share some of hers.
Stella might tell you about Tom, a boyfriend who likes to play games, about the mother who abandoned her, now back after twelve years. She might tell you about the perfume bottle with the star-shaped stopper, or about her father.
What Stella really wants to know is more about the mysterious man calling the station … who says he knows who killed Victoria, and has proof. Tonight is the night for secrets, and Stella wants to know everything…
This is a unique story told on a very small scale, as a murder mystery takes place within a microcosm containing few characters and only one primary setting, yet is intriguing nonetheless. Smartly written and with no shortage of atmosphere, it pulls you in to its strangely intimate yet dark narrative, although certain parts are far-fetched and the ending does not quite hit the mark.
Dual timelines and multiple perspectives play a key role as Louise Beech goes for a more psychological approach compared to her previous offerings, and suspense arrives from the various scenarios these create. Amidst all of that lie some clever and novel ideas, along with the familiar emotional portrayal of parental relationships that leave a sizeable impact.
Stella McKeever is a late-night presenter at a local radio station in Hull, mostly playing songs on request while taking telephone calls from listeners. She is now hosting her final show, and is asking people to contact her with their secrets. Meanwhile, the biggest local news story – as relayed by the station’s controller and newsreader Stephen Sainty – is the murder of Victoria Valbon, a heavily pregnant young woman.
There are many unanswered questions from Stella’s childhood. Her mother Elizabeth has only just come back into her life having abandoned her with their next-door neighbour when she was twelve years old, leaving just a note and a star-shaped perfume bottle. Also, Elizabeth has never revealed to Stella the identity of her father, on account that he was ‘not the paternal type’.
As Victoria’s murder remains unsolved, Stella has encountered some strange incidents at the radio station. A man seems to be watching her when she leaves, one person frequently calls the show claiming to know what happened, and a mysterious book by Harland Grey – a man who killed a woman years earlier during the making of a film – is left for her in the foyer. It eventually turns out that her boyfriend Tom and her mother, happened to know Victoria very well.
The way the plot is structured means that there are some unexpected twists in the mystery and many possible outcomes, which are all used as red herrings until everything finally unravels. The concept of the radio show felt different and there are lots of other little components within the story that showcased a real attention to detail, even if it gets slightly untidy towards the end.
Although the mystery and the radio show form the centrepiece of the story, the most effective moments are where it looks back at Stella’s childhood and the relationship she has with her mother both past and present. This added some much-needed depth and was one of the reasons why it makes you want to read on, in spite of the relatively slow pace, for after all it is highly character driven.
The whole book is written in the first person and contains three separate narratives, which maybe is one too many. It switches between the perspectives of Stella and Elizabeth, however the former is split into two, with one in the present timeline as she presents the radio show and the other taking place a few weeks earlier, around the time of Victoria’s death.
That earlier timeline is merely exposition and mostly helps to develop Tom as a character. It is the current events that take place in the studio that are the most gripping, as that is where the twists happen and the suspense lifts with the ongoing suggestion of imminent danger. Elizabeth’s point of view, meanwhile, is the most well written and really brings out all of her complexities, making her seem less heartless even when she is hard to truly empathise with.
Stella is an interesting if not always likeable protagonist. She is clearly affected by what happened when she was a child, but as a radio host and during her relationship with Tom she comes across as self-important, while her actions towards the end are quite bizarre. Without giving any spoilers away, there is nothing at all about Tom that warrants such drastic action – he was a character I had very little time for.
The man who claims to know what happened to Victoria is a curious presence and carries an air of menace in the way he develops quite an obsession with Stella. Conversely, some of the more light-hearted moments involve Stephen the newsreader and also taxi driver Bob Fracklehurst, who appears in every Louise Beech novel to date. This time he gets a well deserved starring role, and hopefully he is not retiring for good.
Apart from Stephen occasionally dropping by, Stella spends all of the present timeline alone in the studio at night, which feels quite haunting and claustrophobic. It carries the sense of atmosphere that all she has are the listeners for company, silent except their voices on the other end of the telephone line. Add to that the snippets about Harland Grey and we get something quite noir. The only real dramatic licence used here is that the whole of Hull seemingly listens to this tiny community radio station.
The writing is effortlessly good, handling the weightier subjects with deftness and as always with this author, conjuring something truly original. It takes real skill to write a mystery in this way, even if some of the plot did falter in places. This happens chiefly towards the end, where it descends into melodrama and the final resolution is dissatisfying.
Overall, a very well thought book told a good pace and with a literary flourish, that just could not produce an ending to match. It all amounts to some rather mixed feelings, as otherwise the radio station setting and the various plot points combined to make it an engrossing read from one narrative to the next. Undoubtedly good, but frustrating in parts too.
I had a good time reading this book, and not just because I took it with me on holiday. However, issues with certain parts of the plot and the ending rendered it a mixed bag.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Stephen Reads Books 