xx

Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah EPUB

"How will I begin? Once upon a time… but I am not confessing or revealing. I am lying through my teeth -- that‹s the way to look at it. The truth will only be there to serve the lie, which means I don’t have to feel the feelings" (p. 75).

Naomi Jenkins is in love. Three years ago, she never would have thought it was possible. Kidnapped and brutally raped -- but unwilling to report it to the police, or even to share her anguish outside of an anonymous survivors' Web site -- Naomi effectively shut off her emotions. Then, she met the unhappily married Robert Haworth, and the two shared a blissful year of clandestine meetings. So when Robert misses their usual rendezvous, Naomi is convinced he has come to harm and will stop at nothing to find him.

Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse and Detective Sergeant Charlotte "Charlie" Zailer aren't sure what to make of the expensively dressed and crisply professional sundial maker who arrives in their offices to report a missing person. "Plenty of married men left their lovers without adequate explanation" (p. 20), but experience tells them to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Before coming to the police, Naomi asks her best friend, Yvon Cotchin, to call Robert's home. His wife, Juliet, tells Yvon that he is visiting out-of-town friends. Undeterred, Naomi goes to their house in person only to discover that Robert -- a lorry driver -- has left his vehicle parked outside. When Juliet finds her peering into the house, she calls to Naomi by name and taunts her by saying, " ‘You're better off without him. I've done you a favour' " (p. 27).

Although Simon and Charlie promise Naomi that they'll pay Juliet a visit, Naomi seethes with anger; she wants "to smash… their unresponsive heads together. They as good as admitted that they planned to do nothing" (pp. 36 – 37), and she is not a woman to sit idle when she feels slighted.

Naomi decides to change tactics -- even if it means she must tell a horrific lie. She returns to the station and tells Simon that her previous story was pure fiction. Now, she'd like to report a rape. The circumstances of the attack she describes mirror those that she endured years before, but now she claims that Robert is not her lover -- he is her assailant.

Naomi's wildly contradictory allegations put the crime unit in a tricky position. Their boss, Detective Inspector Giles Proust, thinks that Naomi is playing games, and things have been rocky enough around the station without Proust -- aka The Snowman -- breathing down everyone's necks for answers.



Charlie had been doing her best to hide the romantic feelings she still harbors for Simon -- until he mentions that he's planning to look up a woman involved in one of their earlier cases. Meanwhile, the two other members of their team, DC Christopher Gibbs and DC Colin Sellers, are respectively preoccupied with the former's upcoming nuptials and the latter's romantic getaway with his mistress. However, when it appears that Naomi's actual rapist is still at large, the unit is galvanized into action.

Strangely enough, as the police begin to search for Robert Haworth, they find a lot of unexpected evidence that corroborates Naomi's false claim. But how can this be happening? Naomi knows she was lying -- she knows Robert wasn't the man who raped her, that he isn't the psychopath she claimed he was, so how can the police be finding evidence to suggest that's exactly what he is?

Sophie Hannah is a master of psychological suspense whose star continues to rise. In The Truth-Teller's Lie, she brings back Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer for another superb thriller that plumbs the murkiest regions of the human psyche. But will they be able to act swiftly enough to prevent an even more sinister crime?

xx