The Carrier

The Carrier continues Sophie Hannah's series of crime novels loosely centered around a small group of detectives working in the fictional Culver Valley in England. In this one, a businesswoman named Gaby discovers that a man she had had a sort of relationship with has confessed to the murder of his disabled wife. Gaby is certain that he could not have killed her, which causes her to rush back to save him. Returning to a group of old friends, she finds things are quite a bit more complicated than she'd assumed, but her faith in the man's innocence is undaunted. Meanwhile, the detective leading the investigation, Simon Waterhouse, is dealing simultaneously with his conviction that something is wrong with the case as well as the show more machinations of his somewhat unhinged boss.

Hannah writes as though Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine had combined their novels (yes, I do know they are the same author), with Vine's odd and compelling psychological suspense forming the heart of each novel, but with Rendell's solid and intuitive police work going on simultaneously. Of course, Wexford and Burden would be shocked and dismayed by the sheer unprofessionalism of Waterhouse and his colleagues, but their determination and interest in motivations are similar.

Hannah's plots are growing more convoluted, and I'm not sure that she entirely sold me on the resolution to this one. But her books are always fun to read and to puzzle out and I'm happy that she's allowing both Zailer and Waterhouse, her lead detectives, to become more rounded as characters and to begin to give the reader the background needed to understand why Waterhouse is such a repressed and angry individual. Secondary characters were also fleshed out, which makes the crime-solving team much more enjoyable to spend time with. I really enjoy this series, in part because Hannah is willing to create central characters who border on the unlikeable, although they are growing on me. show less

The opening chapter of THE CARRIER is narrated by Gaby Struthers. She is a 38 year-old business woman who does a lot of travelling for work. On one trip she is prevented from flying out of Dusseldorf airport by bad weather and becomes trapped into looking after one of her fellow passengers, a younger woman called Lauren, whom Gaby thinks of as an ‘unstable tattooed moron’ . Gaby’s sarcastic, superior-sounding internal monologue as she deals with Lauren’s anger at being late and other rants is both funny and cruel but overall did have me thinking I might enjoy the read.

Which is just about the time things fell apart, enjoyment-wise. Lauren has announced that she shouldn’t let a man take the fall for a murder he did not commit show more but Gaby only finds out many hours later that the man Lauren is talking about is Tim Breary who has confessed to murdering his wife Francine. Though she lives with a different man, Gaby is in love with Tim Breary and vows that she will prove his innocence and thus allow the two of them to live together…finally.

And so begins a tortured tale of thoroughly unlikeable not terribly believable people, any of whom I would happily have murdered myself if it meant getting to the end of this tome a little bit sooner.

The cast is rounded out by a wealthy married couple called Kerry and Dan who allowed Tim and his wife to move into their mansion two years previously when Francine had a stroke leaving her unable to move or speak and needing 24-hour care. Like Tim they despise Francine for the cruel woman she was pre-stroke, but they adore Tim and want to help him out. Lauren, who we met as the anxious traveller in the book’s opening, was employed as Francine’s carer and she also lives in the mansion along with her husband Jason who is handyman-cum-gardener-cum-thug.

For reasons that are never even remotely clear to me Tim inspires complete worship amongst a mini cult of devotees, i.e. Gaby, Kerry and Dan. As depicted he is an asinine self-indulgent, bore constantly droning on about his unworthiness. Either he or the author thinks throwing a few lines of poetry into every conversation makes him seem intellectual but honestly it just made him a bit more of a pratt. In short he has all the charisma of wet socks on a winter’s day and I simply did not believe that three adult human beings (even ones with dysfunctional personal histories of their own) would devote themselves to him so fully (Kerry and Dan in particular uproot their own lives completely several times just to be able to serve Tim).

The problem is that this premise underpins the whole story and because I did not buy into it even a little bit the rest of the thing was…well…laughable.

My incredulity only rose a notch or three when the officers of the Spilling police station entered the fray. This completely dysfunctional group of dolts includes Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer who I first met in LITTLE FACE where I thought their fractured relationship completely unworkable. Apparently there have been 6 books in between that book and this one and, unfathomably, the pair are still together. Indeed they’re married now but appear to be as emotionally crippled as they were at the beginning. It’s clear from early events here that a lot more has gone on between these two and amongst their wider group of colleagues and while I don’t know the details of all this sordid nonsense I gather none of it has been pleasant. The upshot of it all is an entire station populated by people who would never actually be employed in a police force but, more to the point, who add absolutely nothing to this story at all aside from word count and tedious sidetracks into infidelity and appalling parenting.

The reason they enter the story at all is because even though Tim has confessed to killing his wife and all the other people involved agree that Tim killed his wife the constabulary diverts its apparently endless resources to investigating the notion that Tim is innocent. There’s a bunch of baffling shenanigans from the boss of the station to ensure that a full investigation takes place and it all seems so far-fetched to me that I have made a mental note that if I ever am accused of a crime I should proclaim my guilt loudly and often as the likeliest way to make sure the police look for some other bugger to pin it on.

There’s no doubt that Hannah can string a sentence together in a way that is a pleasure to read but that alone doesn’t make a worthwhile reading experience, at least not for me. Her characters are ugly and unrealistic en masse, her plotting tries too hard to be clever and just ends up being tedious and her supposed exploration of human psychology is cruel and borders on the puerile. show less

The byzantine path to the resolution of the mystery surrounding the murder of Francine Breary is hardly worth the reader’s effort. This tedious tale is filled with thoroughly unlikeable characters, not the least of which is the supercilious Gaby Struthers whose sarcastic attitude is quite off-putting. None of the characters are particularly empathetic and it stretches credibility for readers to believe that so many people would willingly choose to remain in such unhappy, dysfunctional relationships.

Unfortunately, “The Carrier” is a difficult book to slog through, far too easy [and much too tempting] for the reader to simply set aside. There are some beautifully-written passages, but they are not enough to carry this disappointing show more story. show less

No spoilers.
I like the author's writing style. It's a good mix of character and plot pushing the story.
I thought that this was a Rashomon style plot.
I thought wrong.
I liked one of the main characters. She seemed to be consistent and she changed in a positive way by the end.
Overall the psychological motivations of the group of people involved in the murder didn't hold up. There was back story missing, I think, that could have made this all a bit more plausible. Interesting to and fro ing about abusive relationships.

What kept me reading THE CARRIER is that I wanted to find out who murdered Francine Breary but the path to resolution was a bit long and tortuous.

I haven't read anything by Sophie Hannah before and I thought that perhaps my struggle to understand parts of the novel, particularly the dynamics of the police investigating team, must be because it was part of a series.
But Fantastic Fiction lists THE CARRIER as a stand-alone, not part of the Spilling CID series. But there are obviously connections between this novel and that series. And Sophie Hannah, on her website, lists it as her "eighth psychological crime novel to feature Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer".

Tim Breary who claims to have murdered his bed-ridden and paralysed wife show more Francine by smothering her with a pillow refuses to give any motive for her murder. In the absence of an identified motive, Simon Waterhouse wonders if this means that the murder was a collective action by those living in the house. There are number of references to Agatha Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

Gaby Struthers is travelling in Germany when she meets Lauren Cookson who had been employed as Francine's carer. Gaby's entanglement with Tim Breary took place many years earlier, before the stroke that left Francine paralysed. Until she meets Lauren, Gaby has no idea that Tim has been arrested for murder and that he is in gaol. She can't believe that Tim is a murderer.

The main story is told from a number of points of view including a series of letters written to Francine by various characters and "posted" under the immobile Francine's mattress.

Other reviews of this book talk about the complexity of the plot, the exploration of psychological relationships between Tim and Francine and their other friends, and the way that Sophie Hannah makes the reader wait until the very end for the plot resolution. I certainly have to agree with most of them on these points but my problem is that I never really liked any of the characters, not even the police investigators. This tended to make reading the book, chosen by my face-to-face reading group, more a chore than a pleasure. And yet it is a book that has left me thinking. show less

Gaby Struthers's plane is delayed and not only is that a major inconvenience, she is then is expected to share a shabby hotel room with an hysterical female fellow passenger. Lauren Cookson, the terrified young woman, appears to be frightened of Gaby herself? Why? Gaby has never met her and Lauren refuses to explain her behaviour. All she will say is that an innocent man is going to prison for a murder he didn't commit. Gaby is perplexed, but eventually she ascertains that this "random meeting" is not so unplanned as first thought. There is a connection between the two women.

The murder victim was a woman who is paralysed with locked-in syndrome. This woman Francine, was the wife of the man that Gaby has always loved and believed that show more there was "unfinished business" as far as their relationship was concerned. It is Tim, the widower, who is charged with Francine's murder and has confessed to the crime. Lauren, and her partner, happen to live in the same house as Tim and Francine, along with another somewhat weird couple Kerry and Dan. It's a strange set up,and it gets even stranger as the plot unfurls.

This is no open and shut case? Of course not. This is Sophie Hannah writing and this is the return of the detectives we have enjoyed in her previous novels.

I love Sophie's writing. It is intelligent and enjoyable. However, I did find the first half of the book quite a hard slog. After the half way point, I couldn't put it down. The storyline is a good one, as usual for Ms Hannah, but it was overlong and a bit tedious. So much so, I nearly abandoned it, but I am relieved that I kept going. None of the characters are very likeable...but that is human nature...and Sophie Hannah is clearly fascinated by human behaviour and how people react in different situations. That is her forte, and why I continue to read her novels.

Recommended, but with some reservations. show less

A compelling read, very intriguing and unusual. It does take a little while to sort out the police characters, a whole complex story by themselves. The main character, Gaby, is a terrific creation- powerfully strong minded, an unusually independent woman, with a weakness for one man. Sounds trite but believe me, it unfolds in a away that can only be done by a very talented psychological thriller writer. The ending left me with some unanswered questions - eg I'm not sure I could tell you the significance of the title. And that one man ..... On the other hand, I did appreciate finding out whodunnit.