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I was a little apprehensive as I started to read the book a couple of days ago. Billed as a psychological thriller, it didn’t sound like my kind of book at all. But the narration is clear, well-paced and it’s not a difficult read at all. It’s certainly tense, and there are one or two quite unpleasant moments. I found it very difficult to put down, and finished it much more rapidly than I had expected to.
The story is told primarily in the first person by a psychotherapist called Theo. But it’s about a young woman called Alicia, who, we’re told in the first sentence, killed her husband when she was thirty-three. This happened six years earlier than the main narration. At least, it’s the first sentence of ‘part one’ of the book. There’s a brief prologue which shows us the first entry in Alicia’s journal, written six years earlier in the weeks prior to her husband’s death.
She says that she’s writing because her husband Gabriel wants her to, as she’s been quite disturbed by something. And it immediately brings a question into the narration, for Alicia clearly loves Gabriel very much. She’s an artist and he’s always been very supportive of her work. They seem to have a good relationship, so I was instantly hooked: why would she have shot him? Or was he, in fact, shot by someone else....?
There are further brief journal entries in the book interspersed with the main narration by Theo. The journal dates gradually move towards the one on which Alicia’s husband Gabriel was killed. It’s a clever device, gradually introducing new information, revealing something of Alicia’s mindset at the time, and what she was afraid of.
The main story involves Theo starting work at the institution where Alicia was sent, after a trial which determined that she was mentally unstable. He’s clearly somewhat fixated with her, and convinced that he will be able to help, even after all this time. Alicia has not said a word to anyone since the shooting - she is the ‘silent patient’ of the title. There’s a mysterious allusion to a classical tragedy by Euripides, ‘Alcestis’, although the reasons behind this are not clear until near the end.
As an occasional reader of light crime fiction, I was on the lookout for clues. If Alicia shot her husband, what was her motivation? If she didn’t, who did, and why was she shielding them? Why was she not talking to anyone? Who could be trusted…? I had some suspicions fairly early in the book, which turned out to be correct although I had not put the entire story or the timeline together in my mind. It’s really a very clever plot, which all comes together very nicely at the end.
There are some interesting asides, too about the minds of criminals, and about the way that childhood experiences can lead to repressed anger or worse. There's mention too of how those who commit the worst crimes were probably abused in some way, physically or psychologically, as children. The author isn't qualified as a therapist or psychiatrist, as far as I know, but these comments and the whole setup seem to be authentic.
The writing reminded me more than once of Susan Howatch, with a crisp style and hints of things to come; the characterisation, however, is not as masterly as Howatch’s. Many of the people in this book seem caricatured, none of them empathic or three-dimensional. As Theo starts his investigations, some of them done without the approval of his boss, there are a fair number of contradictions in people’s stories; I had no sense that anyone was trustworthy, other than, perhaps, the elderly Ruth; and she only has one brief scene.
Still, it’s a powerful, thought-provoking novel and one which I look forward to discussing. Definitely recommended if you like light crime fiction and are looking for something a little different.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's Book Reviews
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