The Couple at the Table

A really excellently clever written book. I often find two things with Sophie Hannah books and they are that her books tend to be rather slow to start with and they take a bit of perseverance to keep going at first and secondly that her book plots are a little bit out there, not totally in the realms of reality for normal people, so again it takes a bit more perseverance to keep reading.

This book had both, very slow to start yes and it never really picked up any dramatic pace, but the story was good and it was intriguing, so I felt compelled to keep reading. Yes it was rather out there at times too.

A woman named Jane is murdered in a holiday resort and the evidence points to no one being her killer and obviously that can’t be the case as someone had to have killed her. She was a hateful woman and was horrible to everyone and so you wouldn’t blame many for attacking her, but there is just no one that really stands out enough to have killed her. Yes I thought it could either be her husband William or his first wife Lucy, who just happens to be there holidaying with her fiancé. But it’s just too obvious to be either of them and so that leaves who?????

The parts Lucy played were interesting in the beginning, until they just became more bizarre and weird, like she has moved on but she is also obsessed with her ex and with who murdered his wife and why does she care so much! She writes a letter to the unknown killer as if they could be kindred spirits and then becomes like some evangelist, pestering police and everyone who was there at the time, like why is she so obsessed with it all. So I did like her in the beginning, but by half way through I really disliked her for being such a pathetic deranged person and for just being a bore!

The police really did drag out the reveal at the end though, it just went on and on and on, like just get to the point and tell us who killed her! Now like I said, no evidence that it was anyone and normally I can guess who the killer is, but this truly stumped me. And that is what made it so appealing, I didn’t want to put it down until id found out who it was. When it was eventually revealed (15 million years later) it wasn’t a massive shock, because obviously it had to have been one of the nine people that where there that night and I suppose no matter which one of them it turned out to be, it wouldn’t have been a shock really. The killer’s motives are a bit ridiculous though, rather over the top.

But overall it was an enjoyable entertaining read.

Submitted by Stephanie