Wall of Silence has been on my Kindle for a while (I think I idly picked it up as some kind of promotional freebie), but I finally got to it recently and I was wowed by its power. Tracy Buchanan created a dark, moody thriller that nevertheless moves quickly (despite its secrets being doled out in deliberately small, infrequent doses) yet is not without humor, just when it's needed to lighten the darkness.
Melissa Byatt returns home from a walk in her small and lovely English village to find her husband Patrick on the floor of their kitchen, felled by both a stab wound in his side and a head wound. A bloody knife is on the floor beside him. At least it is for a while until the knife disappears. Patrick is still alive but is soon put into a medically-induced coma to aid his recovery, so he can't immediately say what happened to him. The book's title refers to the wall of silence Melissa experiences from her own children, a set of older twins and their younger sister, as it soon becomes clear they know at least something about what happened to their father but don't want to talk about it.
The effective moodiness of the book comes from the many dark secrets we slowly learn about the immediate Byatt family, their extended family, and many of the other residents of their village. It also comes from the dark, primeval forest on the edge of the village, where all sorts of darkly dramatic things have happened over the years and continue to happen. And the humor I mentioned never overtakes the book, just appearing from time to time when we need it. It mostly (almost entirely) comes in the form of the village's chatty Facebook group, where the village's residents just say what they want in typical gossipy fashion, not caring how increasingly outrageous their comments become.
Anyway, I don't want to say much more, just that this is an immersive little book with a good central mystery revolving around family secrets and prejudices, all of which feel like the real types of family issues we've all either witnessed or experienced, though hopefully without the violence on display here. But of course this wouldn't be a crime thriller without the violence and dark doings, right? And this is quite a good little crime thriller. I'll be on the look-out for more of Ms. Buchanan's works.
