Great Reads for Great Readers

 

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.