Mapping the Edge by
Sarah Dunant
pbk out May 99
(Virago)
at £10.99
Every year, thousands of people go missing from home. Some of them are just like Anna, the central character of Mapping the Edge. With no obvious crisis in their lives, they abandon secure homes, jobs and families and simply disappear. Anna leaves her apparently adored six year old daughter bewildered, and the two friends who have helped her raise Lucy baffled. Soon confusion gives way to fear.
Meanwhile, Dunant provides two alternate narratives for Anna, each of which unfolds with increasing menace. Can Anna reassert control over her own life and find her way back to her life? Or will she simply become another statistic, leaving those behind to grieve and wonder? In the process, Dunant peels away the layers of her characters' lives, exposing their weaknesses as ruthlessly as their strengths.
One of the joys of contemporary British crime fiction is that it defies categorisation because its practitioners are constantly trying new things. In this nail-biting thriller, Sarah Dunant manages to combine gripping suspense with thought-provoking experiment to produce an utterly absorbing read that kept me awake well into the small hours.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
Mapping the Edge by
Sarah Dunant