Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah

My reading has got off to a very slow start this year, very unusual for me, but I seem to have had lots of other distractions. I have even been too tired to read before going to sleep at night recently!

So it is the 19th of January and this is my first book review of the year as I have only just completed my first novel of 2010. What a brilliant start to a year of reading though, thrillers are not my favourite genre but for Sophie Hannah’s excellent writing I am prepared to make an exception.

I think that ‘Hurting Distance’ is every bit as good as her last novel ‘Little Face’. I am now looking forward to reading the two titles she has published since, ‘The Point of Rescue’ and ‘The Other Half Lives’ both of which I am lucky enough to already have on my bookshelf.

Using the same successful pattern as her previous novel Sophie Hannah uses the two female protagonists Naomi Jenkins, the victim and Charlie Zailer the detective investigating the case to tell the story in alternating chapters. In fact two of the detectives Charlie and Simon both appeared in her previous novel and it seems they are to become regular characters as they are apparently also in the next one. Be warned though rape is featured in this novel and some of the descriptions may be upsetting, the rapist is a particularly nasty piece of humanity!

Both disconcerting and compelling this chilling tale of obsessive love certainly kept me guessing right to the end.