The Other Half Lives
by Sophie Hannah
Hodder & Stoughton, HK$195
A young woman goes to the police. She has a story to tell, but her story makes no sense. She has come to report that her boyfriend says he has killed a woman named Mary Trelease. But the person he says he has killed is indubitably alive. But the boyfriend insists he has killed her. Why would a man confess to a murder that never happened?
The Other Half Lives begins, then, with an impossible object, the psychological equivalent of the locked-room mystery, an apparently inexplicable event. What follows is in many ways a classic example of the crime thriller. Piece by suspenseful piece, more data about the hidden past are discovered, at first only making the case more baffling, but eventually untying the complex knot of secrets and deceptions until all is revealed. The significance of the title is only fully explained in the last sentence.
On the way to that satisfying (if not exactly happy) ending, you will enjoy most of the ingredients of the genre in its contemporary form. There is some snappy dialogue and a bit of gruesome violence. Wedded to the job, the assigned detective is juggling a personal life that is close to collapse. A disproportionate number of the characters are damaged by an experience of abuse, obsession or simple misery. It seems almost everyone is harbouring some secret shame or passion.