Little Black Lies

Starred review from March 9, 2015
In this nail-biter set in the Falkland Islands from Mary Higgins Clark Award–finalist Bolton (Blood Harvest), Catrin Quinn’s young sons, Kit and Ned, are killed in a car accident caused by her best friend since childhood, Rachel Grimwood. The only thing that keeps the bereft Catrin functioning is her hatred of Rachel and her vow to kill Rachel to avenge the deaths of her sons. Rachel falls into a deep depression resulting from her overwhelming guilt and the loss of Catrin’s friendship. And Callum Murray, who witnessed the accident and failed in his attempt to rescue Kit and Ned, experiences the PTSD that he suffered after fighting for the British in the Falkland Islands war. When a small boy disappears from Stanley—the third boy missing in three years—the townspeople become vigilantes determined to find and punish the abductor. This brilliantly plotted thriller, filled with lies and betrayals, builds to an unexpected, mesmerizing ending. Agent: Anne-Marie Doulton, Ampersand Agency (U.K.).

March 15, 2015
Bolton (A Dark and Twisted Tide, 2014, etc.) offers three different tellings of much the same tale, set in the stark beauty of the remote Falkland Islands.Catrin Quinn's job at Falkland Conservation is to protect the sea life in the Falklands' fragile ecology. Why would her goal, her passion, lie in nursing a plan to kill her former best friend, Rachel Grimwood? The answer unfolds in three strands. As Catrin glides among the fur seals and pilot whales, she reveals the unending source of her pain: her two young sons, Ned and Kit, left alone in a car parked on a cliff, fell to their deaths in the same sea whose wildlife she now protects. Her ex-husband, Ben, has moved on, remarried, and started a second family. Only her former lover Callum Murray, a Scottish soldier who came to defend the Falklands during the Argentine invasion, understands who Catrin has become. In his narrative, he tries to woo Catrin back into the world. In spite of his own struggles with PTSD, he tempts her into the hero's role, searching for a toddler who's gone missing from a tour-boat holiday. But trying to save another mother's child provides scant relief for Catrin, who trains her sights ever more narrowly on Rachel, the woman who left Ned and Kit in the vehicle that became their coffin. Bolton leaves it to Catrin's intended victim to bring her story home, but Rachel's narrative lacks the bite of the earlier two. In the end, what might have been a searching look into the fine line between mishap and crime ends in a cascade of improbability.

April 1, 2015

Catrin Coffin, a whale researcher, is part of a close-knit community in the remote Falkland Islands. When her best friend Rachel accidentally causes the death of Catrin's two children, Catrin sinks into profound depression; three years later she is plotting a revenge killing. Then children begin disappearing. When Catrin has to euthanize nearly 200 beached whales, the village suspects she could be another kind of killer. After Rachel's youngest child disappears, Catrin confesses. Then Rachel confesses. Then Catrin's boyfriend, a veteran of the 1982 British-Argentine conflict who suffers post-traumatic stress blackouts, also confesses. VERDICT In her new stand-alone (after Sacrifice) Bolton, author of the Lacey Flint mystery series (A Dark and Twisted Tide), continues to delve into the dark side of complex, sympathetic characters, each of whom offer their perspective on the same events. Although the lyrical descriptions of a distant and strange place are striking, it's the skillfully developed suspense and the portrait of parents' terror when a child goes missing that grips throughout this tale. [See Prepub Alert, 11/24/14.]--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2015
The Falkland Islands makes for an unusual setting in this twisty tale of missing children. Catrin Quinn hasn't been the same since her two children died while in the care of her best friend, Rachel. It was an accidental death, but it cost Catrin not only her daughters but also her husband, Ben, and her friendship with Rachel. Catrin's former lover, Callen, feels helpless; he's still in love with Catrin but not sure how to reach her, and he, too, has his own psychic wounds: PTSD, a holdover from the Falklands War. When a young boy goes missing, the local police chief is hesitant to blame locals and wants to protect the tourism trade. But he is the third child to go missing in about a year. Then a fourth child disappearsRachel's youngest boyand Catrin becomes the chief suspect. A pod of beached whales adds another powerful layer of horror to the story, and the proposed plan to euthanize the whales is not one that will please animal activists. Each of the main characters has a strong and compelling voice; the story unfolds in sections, each from the point of view of a different character, which adds texture and depth to what is a suspenseful and psychologically rich thriller, much in the mold of Tana French's The Secret Place (2014). Sharon Bolton also writes as S. J. Bolton.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)