The Silent Listener Review

Deep red scars. Cold dark secrets . . .

In the cold, wet summer of 1960, 11-year-old Joy Henderson lives in constant fear of her father. She tries to make him happy but, as he keeps reminding her, she is nothing but a filthy sinner destined for Hell . . .Yet, decades later, she returns to the family’s farm to nurse him on his death bed. To her surprise, her ‘perfect’ sister Ruth is also there, whispering dark words, urging revenge.

Then the day after their father finally confesses to a despicable crime, Joy finds him dead – with a belt pulled tight around his neck . . .

For Senior Constable Alex Shepherd, investigating George’s murder revives memories of an unsolved case still haunting him since that strange summer of 1960: the disappearance of nine-year-old Wendy Boscombe.

As seemingly impossible facts surface about the Henderson’s – from the past and the present – Shepherd suspects that Joy is pulling him into an intricate web of lies and that Wendy’s disappearance is the key to the bizarre truth.

The Silent Listener is the first novel by Australian editor and author, Lyn Yeowart. George Henderson, a respected member of the Blackhunt community, is dead. His daughter, Joy, called back after a seventeen-year absence to care for her dying father, might be expected to grieve, but does not. Senior Constable Alex Shepherd, summoned to the scene by George’s doctor, is suspicious: did Joy murder her father? If so, why?

In 1942, after a very short courtship, Gwen marries George Henderson and is brought to his newly-purchased dairy farm at Blackhunt in rural Victoria. From his detailed instructions, his rigid rules, his tight control of every aspect of her life, and his physical abuse, Gwen understands that this marriage will never be what she had expected.

Having no alternative, Gwen works hard to keep George happy and seeks refuge in her chooks and her flowers and the tiny room where she makes bouquets and wreaths to earn a few pounds. Within a decade, Gwen has given birth to a son, Mark, and two daughters, Ruth and Joy. She tries to protect them, but without a clear example of mothering in her own life, is less than successful.

Her children grow up learning to fear their father’s mercurial moods, which might deteriorate from the amount of rain that falls or the size of the butter factory cheque or the vet’s bill, or the perceived breaking of one of his countless arbitrary rules; they live in constant fear of the corporal punishment he seems to relish in dishing out to his “dirty, filthy sinners who are going to rot in Hell”.

George is a pillar of the community: An Elder of the Church, active in Rotary, a member of the High School PTA, the Fire Brigade, and the Shire Council committee, always helpful to neighbours, loved and lauded by all. When nine-year-old Wendy Boscombe goes missing two days after Christmas in 1960, no one in the town of Blackhunt could imagine he would have anything to do with it. But Wendy is never found, and Alex Shepherd is plagued by his failure to find her.

The story plays out over three time periods and is told from three perspectives. Readers are likely to wonder from the start about reliability of Joy’s narrative, and will feel vindicated about certain aspects as the facts are revealed, but there are still plenty of red herrings, distractions and twists to keep the pages turning.

The building tension in the story is sometimes relieved by neighbour Robert Larsen’s amusing word confusions (fire distinguisher, a quick trump call, obliviously, a fine lemming meringue pie), Joy’s insidious little acts of revenge, her musings about God, and the images and feelings that certain words convey to her. The easy acceptance of Gwen’s search of the Death Notices for “good ones” highlights the distortion of normality in this family.

Yeowart’s portrayal of setting and era are faultless, and the mindset of this small Australian rural community in each of the time periods is likely to strike a chord with many. Her character development is particularly skilful, and her depiction of coercive control is chilling. Her cop, if tenacious, is not terribly clever, but he does get there in the end. This is a slow burn thriller that richly rewards the reader’s patience.  4 stars.

The Existence of Bea Pearl Review

I received an ARC of The Existence of Bea Pearl by Candice Marley Conner in return for an honest review through NetGalley. Thank you so much to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.

 Sixteen-year-old Bea Pearl knows her brother isn’t dead. Even if her parents don’t agree. Even if the entire town doesn’t believe her. She knows it’s true. When orders came to evacuate Lake George due to rising floodwaters, Bea Pearl saw Jim head toward the river. She followed him. Only she returned.

When her parents have Jim declared legally dead, Bea Pearl decides it’s up to her to figure out where her brother could be if he is alive, and so begins to unravel the mystery of his disappearance. But it seems like someone else wants to know what he was hiding when his bedroom is ransacked. More clues come together: a scrap of paper, mysterious numbers that may lead to swamp monkeys, Jim’s shoes turning up in unexpected places. Bea Pearl can’t figure out what connects them all until she’s stolen from her bed in the dead of night.

Bea Pearl’s insistence that Jim’s alive and her quest to figure out why he went down to a flooding river in the first place takes a toll on her shattering family. But she must unearth the truth surrounding her presumed dead brother. Otherwise, the rumours are true and she has killed him. Because if Jim can stop existing, could she too?

OMG where to start with this book!!!

The existence of Bea Pearl is a southern mystery novel about family and deception, about really existing and what it means to exist. I loved everything about this book.  It clasped me in its grip from the very start and it couldn’t let me go. The novel kept me guessing throughout the whole thing which for someone who has read a lot of mystery/crime/thriller fiction that is quite hard to do.  I found all of the characters relatable and I loved the aspect that you never really knew who was good and who the villains of the piece were.  I also loved that the ending shocked me.

It is a great book and definitely worth a read whether this is your usual genre or not. A very strong 4 stars from me.