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Nottingham Evening Post, 24 April 2004Review by John BruntonGoodness. Lost for words? Me? Not often. But Bulwell-based author Clare Littleford, already a force in crimewriting, really turns up the heat with Death Duty. A cracker? Too right. But the real problem I have is that revealing too much about the book would ruin the experience of reading it. Which you've just got to do. Ostensibly a woman-in-peril novel, the central character is Nottingham social worker Jo Elliott who is mugged as she goes into a corner shop and ends up battered on the floor. Jo reckons she knows her attacker, a young thug called Sean Metcalfe, with whose family she has previously had dealings, and with whom she becomes increasingly obsessed as well as trying to keep her career on the right track. And it is here that her life starts to unravel, and she is suspended after whacking a soppy colleague called Colin in the mouth. Littleford makes some interesting points about inner-city living, but the book grips because of the way she captures the claustrophobic, paranoid nature of Jo's life, alone at home and with friends drawn only from her work circle. The novel shifts up a gear when Jo befriends a young cop, Dave, assigned to investigate her case, and then drives to Skegness with Sean's 12-year-old brother, Danny, after he breaks up in her house, gets drunk on a bottle of rum and falls asleep in her spare bed. It's at this point the novel shifts to over-drive, and a much darker and more absorbing story begins to emerge. There's so much I'd like to say, but it would be annoying, believe me, to even hint at the jaw-dropping series of events that then work out. You've got to read it yourself. I mean that. |
