Living up to Cornwell comparisons
LOUISE Phillips is the award-winning Irish author of four thrillers featuring criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson. Her second, The Doll’s
House, scooped Irish Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2013.
With The Hiding Game, Phillips is going in a totally different direction, with a standalone novel based in the US legal world. The courtroom drama centres on the case of a young nanny called Abby Jones who is accused of murdering the child in her charge.
Heather Baxter, her defence attorney, knows the case is not as clear-cut as the prosecution claims, and with enormous media attention on the trial, the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Heather digs deeper, however, her own mother’s unsolved murder 25 years earlier, in the same small town outside Boston where Abby lives, comes into sharp focus.
When she realises there could be a link between the two cases, Heather knows she has to tread carefully, as there are many people who will do anything to ensure that old secrets stay well buried. Each decision she makes could have deadly consequences, placing both her, and her young client in danger. Will Heather uncover the connection between Abby and what happened to her mother all those years before? And will Abby walk free or face a life behind bars?
Phillips’ talents lie in her characterisation and plotting. The key characters are vivid and well drawn, and the plot is intricate and multi-layered. Strong flashback content from Heather’s mother is interwoven into the narrative, serving to heighten the suspense and keep you wondering until the very end.
Phillips has been compared to US crime writers James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell and with this book, she certainly lives up to that accolade.