Sulari Gentill, has taken a break from her much-loved ‘Rowland Sinclair’ series to write this stand-alone novel. It is complex in structure and opens with an email from a fan called Leo to Australian author Hannah Tigone, who is working on her second novel.
Hannah is setting her novel in Boston, especially the Boston Public Library, but, due to pandemic travel restrictions, is unable to travel there to research the local area and library.
Leo is American and volunteers to do it for her. Hannah also sends him draft chapters for comment but, when he starts to send her photos of murder scenes to aid in her accuracy, her suspicions are aroused.
Hannah’s novel centres around four people sharing a table in the library’s reading room when an ear-piercing scream shatters the silence. One of the four is author Freddie, who is in Boston on a writer’s fellowship to work on his own novel. A conversation begins among the four that develops into friendship and romance. Later that day a body is found. Sinister events begin to dog one of the four, who has a criminal record and therefore is a person of interest. To complicate matters, Hannah creates a character in her book also called Leo.
So, we have Freddie’s novel inside Hannah’s novel inside Sulari’s novel with multiple murders to be solved and two Leos. The action takes a while to get going and the complicated structure means that the reader needs to follow several strands at once.
Although I enjoyed it, for me, I confess I think I prefer Rowland.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am still the person who owned the bio below, but it seems eight years passed when I wasn’t looking. Rather than writing a whole new biography I thought I’d leave 2010 where it was, and update. I still live on a Trufferie in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. Indeed, that’s Badger the truffle dog in this picture. I now have 12 published novels under my belt with the 13th due for release in February 2019.
My work is published in print in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, and worldwide as audiobooks. The little boys I mentioned in my 2010 bio are now strapping young men. It has been a wild and glorious eight years filled with the competing madness of both my real and imaginary worlds. I have met many extraordinary people, made some wonderful friends, earned a readership and, I hope, honed my craft. I remain hopelessly in love with the art of writing.
I’m Australian. I was born in Sri Lanka, learned to speak English in Zambia and grew up in Brisbane. I went to University to study Astrophysics, graduated in Law and after years of corporate contracts, realized I just wanted to tell stories. Perhaps a legal career is a natural precursor to writing fiction.
Whilst I maintain that I am nowhere near old enough for a mid-life crisis, I did begin turning down legal positions two years ago, so that I could write. Since then, I have completed four independent novels and co-authored two others. My first novel was short listed for the 2008 NSW Genre Fiction Award, and another placed in the 2008 FAW National Literary Awards (Jim Hamilton Award). In 2009 I was long-listed in the QWC Hachette Livre Manuscript Development Program and offered a Varuna Fellowship. It was enough to keep me stubbornly refusing to do anything but write, though the bills were mounting and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever be gainfully employed again. Then, in a moment which I’ll always remember as one of pure joy, hysterical giddy excitement and overwhelming relief, Pantera Press asked me to become one of their authors. And so here I am.
I live and write on a small farm in the Snowy Mountains of NSW, where I grow French Black Truffles, breed miniature cattle and raise two wild colonial boys. Most of my time is now happily devoted to researching and writing. I like painting, dogs and ginger ice-cream. I could probably still draft you a contract…but you might find it has a plot…and perhaps a twist or two.
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