Book Review: The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah

When Geraldine Bretherick and her daughter Lucy are found dead in their home, the police - with the exception of Simon Waterhouse - think it’s a murder-suicide. Certainly the diary entries found on Geraldine’s laptop support the theory, though her husband insists a third party must have killed them both.

When Sally Thorning sees Mark Bretherick on the evening news, her nightmare begins. The previous year, she had a holiday fling with a man named Mark Bretherick - but the bereaved husband on the television isn’t him. Convinced that he’s an impostor, and that someone is trying to kill her, she starts an investigation of her own.

To say much more would be to risk giving away something of the fabulously twisting plot. There are a lot of storylines and characters, and I loved sitting back and watching them all come together, while wondering how they all fit. The mystery is baffling, and keeps becoming more so; and I didn’t mind at all when Simon left me floundering in his intellectual wake as he made the last leaps to the solution.

It was the mystery, really, which kept me reading. Without such a good plot, the characters would have driven me crazy. I liked Simon’s former colleague Charlie Zailer, and his being nuts about her eventually made me warm to him, too. But most of the police came with abrasive personalities, and it took a good while before Simon’s sense of superiority stopped making me want to slap him. Sally was the worst; it’s a shame she was integral to the plot because regularly spending time in her viewpoint was painful. She was negative, whiny, catty, and stuck-up, though some of her actions toward the end had me mentally cheering for her. No-one deserves what she went through, but I just couldn’t help thinking that she brought much of it on herself, starting with cheating on her perfectly nice husband (after complaining volubly about him).

There’s at least one other novel featuring Simon and Charlie, and I’ll have to find the next one - the ending practically screamed “Sequel ahead!” and I want to know what happens.

Rating: C