It has been 14 years since she left, and in all that time she hadn’t once made the five-hour journey south.
On The Edge delivers a gripping plot and a genuinely likeable protagonist in Nel Foley. Like her father, Nel is a GP. She fled her hometown after her best friend, Maddie, washed up on a beach – Nel the last person to see her alive and, unfairly, marked by suspicion. Returning only when her father dies, she finds old memories rushing back, reminding her exactly why she stayed away for so long.
Asked to keep the local GP clinic running until a buyer is found, Nel soon realises that the only way she can stay is by uncovering what really happened all those years ago and clearing her name.
The cast of characters is well drawn and adds plenty of intrigue: Maddie’s parents – a federal MP and a reclusive painter; Ryan, the former high-school jock turned realtor who was dating Maddie at the time of her disappearance, and his quiet, reserved wife, Sophie – possibly holding her own secrets; and Nel’s high-school friend Jimmy, newly returned after a marriage breakdown and a career-ending missing-child case.
While this novel sits slightly outside classic Australian crime noir, its central mystery is strong and satisfying. Kate Horan also weaves in themes of domestic violence. At times the treatment can feel a little heavy-handed, but the intention is admirable, and her choice to spotlight such an important issue in a book destined for a wide audience is commendable.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – a great summer read.
Book review by Nicola Skinstad
Read a book review of The Inheritance by Kate Horan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Horan has spent the last 17 years working in corporate communications, helping executives to pitch and present. Before that, she taught English and Drama at high schools in western Sydney where she relished inspiring teenagers with a love of reading and writing. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 2001 with an Honours degree in English Literature.
She traces her love of storytelling back to her childhood when she would listen to her father and grandfather telling stories around the dinner table. Always a voracious reader, as a child she was often in trouble for reading under the quilt with a torch after lights out, and she firmly believes bookshops are the most magical places on earth. After many years of feeling the niggle to write her own stories, she attended Faber Academy’s Writing a Novel program in 2020.
When she’s not dreaming up stories about complicated families with dark secrets, she’s kid-wrangling her two young, high-spirited boys, listening to podcasts and walking her golden lab on Sydney’s beautiful Northern Beaches.
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