A cleverly designed and well executed thriller, I Know You will keep you on the edge of your seat until the truth is finally revealed. Claire McGowan delivers a strong and intriguing novel that makes you feel the pain and desperation of being accused of crimes you didn’t commit.
Rachel Caldwell is walking her dog when she stumbles across a dead body in the woods near her home in the British Lake District. While most people would call the police, Rachel’s first instinct is to run away as fast as she can. You see, last time she was found at the scene with dead bodies she was accused and convicted of murdering 3 members of the Safran family for whom she nannied, incarcerated on death row for several years before being exonerated and released. And once the victim is identified, Anna, the estranged wife of her current boyfriend, realizes her instinct was correct since she’s now the prime suspect. Trying to keep her past from coming to light, thinking it’ll make her look even guiltier than the police already believe given the mounting evidence pointing at her, Rachel must figure out on her own what happened to keep herself out of prison once again.
There are two aspects to I Know You that work really well. First, it’s how the story goes back and forth between current day and flashbacks. This approach allows for a slow drip of clarity, doling out puzzle pieces one at a time to build suspense while you build your own hypotheses. Which leads to the second great aspect of keeping you guessing all the way until the end. Even when you think you’ve figured it out, the book offers new information that seeds doubt in your mind, leading you to flip flop on your opinion multiple times for who killed Ana and what happened in the Safran home 20 years ago. So even if you actually do figure it out early on in the book, you won’t be sure until the end. It plays games with your mind and makes you question what’s right in front of you. A great trait of a solid murder mystery.
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Barrington Books
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