Carol Smith (1) (1938–2023)

Every once in a while a news story turns up about a man who had been caught out leading a double life. The wives involved often had no clue that her one and only was also the one and only of someone else. Each time we’re amazed that the guy could keep things straight and that the women remained completely fooled. Didn’t he ever call one kid by another’s name? Didn’t he ever mix up birthdays? I guess not. I like to think that I could never be duped by such a man.

In this novel, the guy show more is leading a near triple life and has past lives ready to cascade over and flatten everything. The first thread comes from Frankie’s tale. She met Chad when she was in a youth detention center for burning down her step father’s house. It’s implied step-dad was sexually assaulting her, but she never states that outright. Chad is charming, gorgeous and a sociopath. He flatters and woos her to engineer what she thinks will be their escape, but ends with Chad ending up accidentally dead in his own fire. Stupidly, Frankie takes the blame and gets sent up for murder. Then, decades later while out on an errand for the commune she now belongs to, she sees Chad on the train. She snaps and does everything she can to track him down, eventually finding him.

But it is not Chad. It is Aiden, Chad’s son via his ex-wife Cassie. Only now he goes by Charles. After 20 years of marriage to Cassie, Charles tells her about his ongoing affair. Now he's married to Pippa and has infant twins. Pippa has always wondered why Cassie could give him up so meekly, but she soon realizes why. Charles is constantly away from home and the twins are a handful (baby sociopaths are part of Charles's legacy). Pippa’s business begins to suffer as does she under the strain. She is mystified when the police show up and tell her Charles has been arrested on unspecified charges. Shit has hit the fan.

Charles claims business as his reason for extended travel. What he’s really doing is cultivating a relationship with Jenny, a single mother trying to get a restaurant off the ground. Now he’s known as Clive. He’s charming, sexy and Jenny rapidly falls in love with him and maintains a fierce devotion despite his extended absences. Luckily she’s got a good friend who doesn’t quite trust Clive. One day, she sees him in the audience at Wimbledon when he’s supposed to be at Corfu for a rugby match. Shit has hit the fan.

In the background is a woman named Christina living in Paris. She is an ex-supermodel and embodies all that is ugly about ignorant, indulged beauties gone past their sell-by dates. She is a shrew living as one man’s mistress while planning a marriage to another. The mansion’s staff hates her and so do we. A complication to her pending nuptials is the tiny fact that she might already be married. To a guy she met in Rio named Cal. She and Cal were the it couple for a while and lived the high life together for 18 months when he up and vanished without a trace. Instead of her desperation groom, she opens the door to Cal on her wedding day. Shit has hit the fan.

The portraits of the women in Chad’s life are great. Cassie being the most likeable because she’s the only one who wreaks any kind of havoc on the guy. First letting him go so quietly and demanding he marry Pippa, something we understand he wouldn’t have done if given a choice. Then selling off the London flat she so conveniently let him use. Detachment is the one thing he cannot stand, unless it is him doing the detaching.

I do wish that we’d gotten his perspective on things. There were glimmers, here and there where we were given some shreds, but not enough to really hate the guy. If we’d had some narrative about him the same way we had it about his women, the emotions would have boiled over. As it was, they only simmered. And the ending is truncated as well. We see him arrested and the women’s lives start to turn for the better, but we never see him suffer. We never get his outrage and anger. We need that payoff by now and without it the novel suffers instead. show less

This book started out really well - it was well-plotted, fast-paced and kept me guessing. Unfortunately the ending was such an anticlimax I was disappointed. Carol Smith builds up the suspense very well but the conclusion just falls flat in my opinion. So many ends are left untied - we don't get to know how Chad/Charles/etc reacts to being found out, why he was 'devil's spawn' or why Aidan and the twins seem to be so unavoidably drawn towards his bad example. In fact the whole Aidan subplot show more felt like an afterthought thrown in to add 'excitement' as if the book just had to have a murder or two to satisfy the publisher. I will try other books by Carol Smith, as her writing style is very readable but I think the ending of this book was far too rushed. show less

Not as good as some of her other novels because the plot is very one-dimensional and the main character, Rose, is not very sympathetic. Everything is focused on Rose’s irrational, 20 year obsession with Joe; a one-night-stand from college. She is a truly idiotic character. Intellectually she is a genius and works a corporate job at which she excels and gains promotion after promotion. Emotionally she is a moron and fixates onto Joe with a fierceness and lack of embarrassment that is hard show more to take. She continually throws herself at him and is harshly rejected. Eventually Joe marries her younger sister, but even this does not deter her. Instead she hatches a complicated plot to get Joe back. Yep, she thinks she had him once and that they are destined to be together. Deluded much? She’s pretty repulsive and I don’t wonder why Joe wants nothing to do with her.

The ending while interesting, lacks follow through. We’re given a glimmer of what may come, but because we’ve been basically bored to tears with the proceedings up until this point, we don’t care all that much. There is no upshot, no impact, it just sort of fizzles. I think if less attention had been paid to Rose and other plot threads worked in, the emotional level might be high enough for the reader to care. Smith might also have given us more sympathetic characters to latch onto instead of Rose, but we’re left with boring and ineffectual puppets that basically deserve what they get. As it is, I do hope Rose gets what’s coming to her, but don’t really give a shit if she doesn’t. show less

Well this book had its ups and down. The ups were the private vignettes from each neighbor’s perspective. The true feeling each has for the other is hidden when they are together. The porter’s secret former life was interesting once you got past the fact that he wasn’t the killer. Kate’s cat was pretty good. His comings and goings would have made a good perspective vignette but the author didn’t do that.

After the second murder, I guessed about the secret tunnels in the mansion show more block that turned out to be there and were exploited by the killer. Also, there was really only one person who could a. fit in the tunnels and b. have enough strength to kill the way the killer did. Then when some women’s clothes turned up in a place they shouldn’t be, I knew Gregory was the killer. The obvious finding of the girlfriend’s passport wasn’t necessary but was an eerie touch. After Connie found it though, she still ran blindly to her death – literally ran to his arms. Whatta dunce.

The ending was a bit smarmy though. Kate and her not quite divorced husband whom she left years ago, comes back into her life through the investigation of Gregory. He is still carrying the torch and she comes to her senses. Miles’ wife Claudia has made friends with Miles’ ex-wife and kids and is accepted into the building’s community even though her husband cheated many of them out of their fortunes. Eleni doing her moonlight flit was pretty good; basically she was a prostitute and scammed men out of their money so she could support herself and her madame/mother, Demeter. The porter turns out to be a former archdeacon. Former because he fell in love with a married woman and had to leave his calling and his faith behind. After 8 years of misery, the woman he loves finds him and chooses him. Like I said; smarmy. show less