The Girl in Cell A, by Vaseem
Khan.
Orianna Negi is the notorious dweller of Cell A,
convicted at 17 of killing her wealthy father – because she was found
unconscious by his body, next to a
shotgun that had blown his head nearly off.
Her fingerprints were all over the weapon and gunshot residue was on her
clothes. An open-and-shut case – but was
it? The advent of the internet, chat
shows, podcasts et al has made her a celebrity, because she doesn’t remember
the actual crime; she has perfect recall
up until the killing itself, but not a single memory exists of The Deed: now she is 35 and eligible for parole after a
lot of counselling to see if she is ready to deal with the outside world – and
she is, for Orianna is convinced she didn’t kill her father (even though he
deserved it!) and wants to return to Eden Falls, the small town where she grew
up to prove her innocence once and for all.
Unsurprisingly, she
encounters a lot of hostility: the good
townspeople of Eden Falls don’t want a convicted murderer in their midst,
particularly one of her pedigree – her mother was housekeeper to the Wyclerc
family, the local mine owners and major employers of the area; she had a reputation as the local girl to go
to for a good time – which one of the Wyclerc sons availed himself of every now
and then, until the inevitable happened, followed by Orianna’s birth and lonely
upbringing in the Big House. She had no
knowledge of her father’s identity until the day he died – but everyone else in
the family knows, including her grandfather Amos, who didn’t acknowledge the
family relationship until she returned to Eden Falls to such hatred that he
insists that for her own safety she stay in the Big House – no longer run by
Orianna’s mother who has since died in mysterious circumstances – ‘Accidental
Death’ is the official term, but Orianna wants no help from anybody,
particularly a family that ignored and rejected her. She’ll take her chances without them, and expose
who really murdered her worthless father.
This is Vaseem Khan’s
first psychological thriller, as he tells us at the end of the book; it’s the first set outside India, first
first-person narrative – so many firsts, but what a success! Plot twists and turns come thick and fast,
and all the characters are completely convincing, in fact it’s hard to believe
that he hasn’t a long list of thrillers to his name, such is his ease in the
genre. My only grizzle is that you’ll
need strong wrists to read this; it
stretches to 574 pages – not easy for late-night ‘My God, what’s going to
happen next!’ readers (me), but totally worth all the yawns the next day. FIVE STARS.
