The Orphan Choir

November 1, 2013
British author Hannah's latest novel explores the psyche of a woman whose life is troubled by a noisy neighbor and the enforced absence of her own small child. Louise Beeston has been battling her neighbor for ages. The man she calls "Mr. Fahrenheit" likes to crank up the music when his friends visit, and Louise has had it with those interruptions to her sleep. What makes it even worse is that she misses her son Joseph, who is in a prestigious boys choir. Joseph attends an exclusive private school in Cambridge, and as an elite member of the choir, is required to board at the school. That means Louise and her husband, Stuart, only see Joseph at services when the choir performs and during breaks when he is allowed to come home. Adding to Louise's consternation is the fact that Stuart is insisting they have their Victorian townhome sandblasted in order to clean the brick. To accomplish this means the place will be swathed in plastic for weeks, including the windows. Louise wants to get away from it all and create a paradise for her family, and she thinks she may have found this in an ad for second homes in a gated country community. But there's a fly in the ointment: She keeps hearing the voices of singing children, a choir like Joseph's, wherever she is. And it appears no one else can hear the choir but her. Hannah, who specializes in psychological thrillers, places the burden of the storytelling on Louise's shoulders. In the end, this proves problematic since the character is portrayed as so relentlessly miserable, bad-tempered and unlikable that few who read the book will care what happens to Louise or her family. A difficult story about a terrible, selfish and deluded woman with a disagreeable personality and a spineless husband.

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Starred review from November 1, 2013
Louise Beeston is teetering on the edge of sanity. She has virtually lost her only child, seven-year-old Joseph, who is required to be a boarder at Savior College School as a member of its 16-boy choir. Then her sleep is badly disrupted by loud music played late atnight by next-door neighbor Justin Clay, until she retaliates in kind, with advice from a city-council environmental-health officer. When Louise begins hearing the type of choral music Joseph sings, she attributes this to Clay playing mind games with her. Her only respite is buying a country home in the beautiful and peaceful community of Swallowfielduntil the choral music follows her there. Wanting her son back home and convinced that she and her husband, Stuart, must pull Joseph out of Savior for their own safety, Louise misinterprets warnings she has been receiving for months. This stand-alone novel, a break from Hannah's series of psychological police procedurals featuring Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse, is a riveting story in which suspense snowballs to a climax that is all the more dire for its everyday contemporary English setting. Absolutely haunting, in every sense of the word.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2013

Louise Beeston is so bothered by a neighbor's constantly blasting choral music (which only she seems to hear) that she has her husband buy a country home. But the music follows her there. Already outselling Hannah's beloved Zailer and Waterhouse series in the UK.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2013

Hannah's newest (after Kind of Cruel) novel, though still a psychological thriller, moves past mystery into ghostly territory. Louise Beeston is being tormented by music. Her neighbor keeps her awake by blasting Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" until the wee hours of the morning. Her husband isn't bothered and manages to sleep through the noise. Not so Louise. It gets so bad that she asks that they buy a house in the country. This solution not only gets Louise away from an obnoxious neighbor, it brings her closer to her small son, who is at a nearby boarding school where he performs in a world-famous choir. Her idyll in the country is short-lived, however. Soon the music starts up again. Only now, she is plagued by the sounds of a choir singing: one that no one else hears. Is she losing her mind? Her husband fears it is so, but Louise is convinced it is something far more sinister and dangerous. VERDICT Hannah's slowly building tension is definitely here, but the payoff comes a bit too late in the story to be effective. That noted, readers of Barbara Vine will enjoy the mix of psychological and ghostly thrills. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/13; library marketing.]--Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

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