When Sophie gets a letter from Battlemouth Prison she faces a dilemma. It is from Matty Melgren, convicted serial killer, now, twenty years on, terminally ill. He wants to see her. To see him would re-open old wounds and stir up old feelings. To see him could, at last, provide closure, for still, after all these years, she is not sure he is guilty and worries that her part in his arrest could have triggered a miscarriage of justice.
Sophie’s chewing over her current dilemma is spliced with her back story. How, aged six, she moved to London from the US with her mother, Amelia Rose (her father didn’t make the trip, having left before Sophie was old enough to remember). How Amelia Rose’s new boyfriend, Matty Melgren, soon became the father figure Sophie never had. How wonderful life was with Matty, though he never moved in and often went missing with work commitments.
How, increasingly, Sophie and Amelia Rose came to consider the awful possibility that Matty Melgren could be the North London serial killer.
Sophie’s narrative
loops around in time, a tad confusingly (though this may be deliberate) and the
guilt-tripping and handwringing gets a bit repetitive. The resolution of the
did he / didn’t he issue involves a couple of revelations that are hard to
swallow. So not the most satisfying read for me.
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