I am delighted to welcome you to my stop on the blog tour for Ruth Sutton's Burning Secrets, which was published by Fahrenheit Press on 18th July 2018.
It’s the spring of 2001 and Foot & Mouth disease is
raging across Cumbria.
Twelve-year-old Helen Heslop is forced to leave her family
farm and move in with relatives in a nearby town because the strict quarantine
means she can’t travel back and forth to school in case she inadvertently helps
spread the disease.
As the authorities and the local farming communities try
desperately to contain the outbreak, tensions run high and everyone’s emotions
are close to the surface.
And then Helen disappears.
The police search expands all over the northwest coast where
farms are barricaded and farming families have been plunged into chaos - not
least the Hislop family, where potentially explosive fault lines are exposed.
Under the strain tensions build inside the police team too,
where local DC Maureen Pritchard is caught between old school DI Bell and new
broom DS Anna Penrose.
Will Helen survive? And can life for the Heslop family ever
be the same, once burning secrets are discovered and old scores settled?
My Thoughts
The most impressive part of this novel is for me, the way the search for the missing child is carried out in the context of the beleaguered farm where all visitors are regarded with fear in case they bring the spread of foot and mouth. The whole countryside seems to be infected and at risk. The farm becomes both a fortress against it and a magnet for something unsavoury. There is always the feeling that there is something festering there.
The introduction of Anna Penrose, an outsider into the police force, adds bite to the investigation and her relationship with Pritchard, the other established woman on the force, lifts it from a straightforward police procedural. Set in 2001, some of the attitudes of the men towards women in the police seem even older. It has a real period feel. There is plenty of tension, with secrets from the past coming to light and always the feeling that certain characters know much more than they are letting on. The innocence of the young is contrasted with the malice of their elders.
In short: an unsettling and tense crime novel.
About the Author
Ruth is a very independent person, which – like many things
– is good up to a point, but can get tricky sometimes. She lives in a very
beautiful place, but it’s a long way to a cinema, or a big supermarket, and if
the time comes when she can’t or doesn’t want to drive, she’ll have to move as
there’s no public transport. She qualifies for a bus pass, but there aren’t any
buses. Her daughter and her family live quite close by, and she loves to see
her two grandchildren. After decades on her own, she has a partner whom she
loves. They each have their own house, 40 minutes apart, and this life style
suits them both. Ruth wrote her first novel after she was 60.
In addition, Ruth has self-published a trilogy entitled
Between the Mountains and the Sea; A Good Liar tells the story of Jessie who
risks career and independence with a love affair, whilst her secret past draws
ever closer. Forgiven is set among the coal mines and fells of the Cumberland
coast. Jessie’s struggle for happiness continues. Fallout features the nuclear
disaster at Windscale, which brings a compelling stranger into Jessie’s world.
for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
Do check out these other great bloggers!
Thanks so much for being a part of the blitz, Marianne x
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