Alice Clark-Platts

Bitter Fruits - Alice Clark Platts

I love debut novels. They are such a lottery. They can be dire and finishing them can feel like wading through treacle. They can be okay and you sense some promise and defer ultimate judgement until the next one. Or they can completely blow you away.
I couldn't put this book down and I mean that literally. Everything was put on hold until I finished it.
I hesitate to use the word brilliant because it is overused and my response is subjective but for me this show more wasn't far short.
It’s a deceptive book and more substantial than it seems at first. And yet curiously there is a danger that this substance could be overlooked as the reader focuses purely on the crime aspect because it is so well done the attention doesn't stray.
The plot is tight, well constructed with a veritable shoal of red herrings to lure the reader into believing they have solved this crime. The characters are believable. There is no holding back when highlighting some of today’s contemporary issues; internet bullying so endemic nowadays, the morality of the media, or their lack of it, the dynamics of a police force pressured into delivering results unreasonably quickly to satisfy the bureaucrats and social commentators as if catching a murderer is so easy. And throughout the book how hard it is to be a young person in today’s world. I could go on the book has such a to to offer.
There were imperfections; the story uses a dual narrative technique and there were a couple of inconsistencies, for example a character developed in the first narrative was suddenly mentioned in the second with no exposition. Some of the descriptive passages were so typical of a debut novel, that desire to demonstrate all at once the writer’s abilities. But I’m nit picking and this book doesn't deserve it.
I’m very excited by this writer and I do hope there are more tales of this calibre to issue forth from her pen. Alice Clark-Platts? I am a fan. show less

This review first appeared on CriminOlly.wordpress.com. I received a free copy of the book in return for a review.

‘The Flower Girls’ is a twisted, twisting mystery that kept me guessing right up to the last page. It’s also a thoughtful, challenging and shocking examination of an emotive subject that avoids easy answers and is all the more powerful for it.
The setup is simple but Alice Clark-Platts does a lot with it. In the late 1990s two young sisters, Laurel (10) and Primrose (6) are show more accused of the murder of a 2 year old girl, Kirstie. Laurel is found guilty and sent to prison. Primrose, who is under the age of criminal responsibility, goes free and she and her parents start a new life under assumed names. Skip forward to the present day and Laurel is still incarcerated, whilst Primrose (now Hazel) is living a normal life and is staying at a hotel with her boyfriend. When Georgie, a young girl who is another guest at the hotel, goes missing, Hazel finds herself a suspect again.
That premise contains two mysteries, what has happened to Georgie and what really happened to Kirstie. Clark-Platts does a good job of teasing them both out throughout the book. The investigation by local police into Georgie’s disappearance is laid out in convincing, if not painstaking, detail; while the truth of the past crime against Kirstis is revealed through flashbacks as Hazel gradually rebuilds her memory of it. The two strands are woven together nicely as the book progresses and both kept me engrossed right up to the end.
Throughout, the book is populated by convincing characters. There are a lot of them too, for a relatively simple narrative, but they are always distinct and I never found myself confused as to who was who. Importantly, they all have motivations and drivers which are believable, even if the reader might not always agree with them. The police investigating the disappearance, the staff and other guests at the hotel, Georgie’s parents, all slip in and out of the narrative effortlessly, building a convincing picture of an ongoing investigation.
What really impressed me though, was the attention that Clark-Platts pays to the continuing impacts of the original crime on the people involved in it. The victim’s family, including her aunt who has built a career as a campaigner for victim’s rights. Laurel who has grown up in prison, and her lawyer uncle who has devoted his life to seeking her release. The details of their lives are moving and thought provoking and really add to the richness of the book.
The end result then, is that ‘The Flower Girls’ is an engrossing and accomplished mystery, but beyond that it’s a brilliant examination of how society treats children who kill. It’s not always easy reading, but it’s definitely worth your time. It kept me guessing and thinking from the first page up until the chilling conclusion. show less

In a run-down bed and breakfast in the city of Durham, a charismatic preacher is brutally bludgeoned to death. His daughter is initially thought to be the perpetrator as the murder weapon was found wrapped in a piece of her clothing. however as DI Erica Martin investigates the crime she discovers many secrets hidden by the church and the family - secrets around madness, death and abuse.

The theme of paedophilia related to religious groups is very topical at the moment and this book takes a show more number of ideas and wraps them around this idea. Unfortunately I think there are just too many ideas on the go here and it makes the book really difficult to get into. However once the story progresses to show the insanity of Sera it takes light and the final third of the book is conducted at an exciting pace and with a renewed interest in the plot which was sagging up till then. The characters of the Durham police team are developing nicely and without the overt emphasis that happened in the previous novel (Bitter Fruits). A fairly standard police procedural with a little edge. show less

The body of a young student is found in the River Wear the night after a student party in Durham. Emily is a pretty blonde from a seemingly nice middle-class home so what could the motive for murder be? DI Erica Martin is charged with solving the case as her first major incident in a new role. There are no shortage of suspects, the student who confessed, the boyfriend who was sending pornographic photos of Emily around, her father with his unhealthy obsession. However as DI Martin is hassled show more by the press and obfuscated by the University hierarchy, she tries to find out who exactly Daniel Shepherd is, seemingly a friend of Emily's, he was also involved in trolling her online.

There is much to like about this book. The plot is interesting, though fairly obvious, and the setting is both accessible and yet distant. The up-to-date ideas of sexual exploitation and trolling work well. Unfortunately the book left me rather cold, the characterisation is weak and the personal life of DI Martin is so sketchy that it seems an afterthought. It's a solid debut rather than an outstanding one. show less