The Dead Lie Down

Starred review from April 12, 2010
Det. Sgt. Charlotte “Charlie” Zailer and Det. Constable Simon Waterhouse face one of their strangest cases yet in this superb thriller from Hannah (The Wrong Mother
). Ruth Bussey, who suffered a violent attack years earlier, arrives at the police station in the English town of Spilling and explains that her boyfriend, painter Aidan Seed, confessed to murdering a woman named Mary Trelease. Charlie and Simon—who recently got engaged, despite their bizarre relationship—are reluctant to take Ruth seriously, especially after they learn that Mary, a reclusive painter, is alive and well. Ruth’s insistence, bordering on the obsessive, prompts the detectives to start digging into Mary’s history. The pair soon discover disturbing links to Aidan and the art world. When an actual murder is committed, Charlie and Simon must sort out what’s real and what’s imagined. A master of intricate plotting, Hannah seamlessly melds the police procedural with a gothic-inspired whodunit. 5-city author tour.

April 1, 2010
Why confess to a murder that never happened?

Picture framer Aidan Seed tells his assistant Ruth Bussey, his new lover, that he murdered Mary Trelease years ago. No questions, please. Ruth not only disbelieves him but has proof that this never happened. Just a few months ago, while working for another picture framer, she fell in love with a signed and recently dated work by Mary and wanted to buy it. As a result, the artist attacked her and caused her to leave her job. Still, the confession so worries Ruth that she approaches the Culver Valley police and speaks with Detective Charlotte Zailer, recently demoted for a past entanglement with a serial rapist. Zailer and her current fianc, socially maladroit copper Simon Waterhouse, unofficially tackle the case of the murder that wasn't. Among their findings: Seed is the prime suspect in the murder of another woman, alternative therapist Gemma Crowther, whose past includes an interlude of torture that left Ruth with a jagged scar bisecting her abdomen, a permanent sense of paranoia and an admiration bordering on obsession for people, like Zailer, who've survived extreme vilification. There's also the peculiar provenance of Abberton, one of Mary's paintings that seems to turn up in unlikely places, including an arts festival and a girl's school attended long ago by a certain Martha Wyers.

A complex, unnerving study of relationships, with none more stressful than that of Sgt. Zailer and DC Waterhouse. Her exemplary skills put Hannah (The Wrong Mother, 2009, etc.) right up there with Ruth Rendell.

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May 15, 2010
Ruth Bussey stops DS Charlotte Zailer in the police station's parking lot and tells her an unusual story. Her boyfriend, Aidan, thinks that he killed a woman named Mary Trelease. But Ruth has met Mary and knows that she is alive. Zailer and DC Simon Waterhouse take statements from Ruth, Aidan, and Mary on the supposition that they think something is going to happen. Set amid London's art scene, Hannah's latest psychological thriller (after "The Wrong Mother" and "Little Face") gets bogged down with long conversations between the investigating officers, as they muse about what would cause someone to claim to have committed a murder that had not occurred. VERDICT The plot is too uninteresting and the behavior of the characters too unnatural to engage readers. The author's fans are likely to be disappointed.Linda Oliver, Colorado Springs

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2010
A sense of dread pervades this outstanding British thriller from the start. When new lovers Aidan Seed and Ruth Bussey bare their souls, Aidan confesses that he killed a woman named Mary Trelease years earlier, but Ruth knows the woman, a painter, is still alive. Disturbed that Aidans words may foretell his future behavior, Ruth tells his story to Detective Sergeant Charlie Zailor, a woman Ruth admires, while Aidan goes to DC Simon Waterhouse with his admission. Puzzled yet concerned, Zailor and Waterhouse put both their careers and their developing relationship at risk to probe for the truth, even while questioning the mental stability of those involved. Both Seed, a picture framer, and Bussey, his assistant, have suffered horribly in their lives, as intimated early on but only gradually revealed, after the slowly developing first half of the novel speeds and spirals to a deadly climax. Hannah deals brilliantly with the issues of artistic accomplishment and success, unrequited emotion, revenge, and retribution. This stunning psychological thriller from the author of the equally outstanding The Wrong Mother (2009) has the complexities of love at its core.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)