I read Tethered by Amy MacKinnon in proof. It appeared in the United States last year, but today it's being published in the UK for the first time.
I confess that I get through an enormous number of crime novels. I love them. There are certain kinds of books I avoid: those in which the USP consists of ever more baroque and hideously inventive ways of dispatching victims; those where the writing is so weedy and sparse that it's only the puzzle element that might keep you going; those that take pleasure in torture and cruelty and, above all, those where the characters are neither believable nor particularly interesting. What I admire most in all novels is the writer's ability to put together a whole universe ready for me to step into. I like detail. I like a book to have a strong sense of place. I like an involving plot and I do admire good writing. And if there's some element in the narrative of the unusual, of a part of the fictional forest that hasn't been much explored, then so much the better.
That's why I enjoyed this novel so much. We are in Brockton, Massachusetts, and in a funeral parlour where Clara March, the heroine, works at preparing the bodies of the dead for burial. The business is owned by Linus, and as Clara tells us, most people trust him to take good care of their funerals because 'his is a sincere belief'. He and his wife Alma are almost like parents to Clara. Clara helps the dead on their way to the after-life with a bouquet of flowers grown in her own garden, and the imagery of gardens and flowers and the meanings and symbolism of the different plants she grows are strong threads running through the book. This was one of the main things which for me lifted Tethered above the ordinary run of crime novels.
The first-person narrative, which is well managed at all times and which rings completely true, takes us right up close to the bodies. Perhaps the detail of Clara's work in the funeral parlour may be a little too much for some tastes but the descriptions are neither gloating nor prurient. They are completely matter-of-fact and sombre and very often poetic. They help us understand the damaged Clara and the complicated history she carries with her into the events that unfold in the present.
The mystery concerns a child, known as Precious Doe, who died some three years before the novel opens. One day a young girl called Trecie wanders into the funeral parlour and Clara is then drawn into a renewed police investigation. It's Detective Mike Sullivan who questions Clara about Precious again because of a more recent death, and the rest of the story, together with the relationship between Mike and Clara, unfolds from that point. Along the way, a morass of horror, corruption and exploitation of the young is uncovered. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling the reader's pleasure.
I couldn't put this book down when I read it and I do recommend it to anyone who likes crime fiction with the kind of attention to real-life detail at which the Scandinavians excel – and with something of that bleakness too. It's a book that shows us an America we are not all that familiar with, written by someone who sees a strangeness in ordinary things. (Adèle Geras)