Review: Riveting and suspenseful
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2012
After the Darkness is an extremely well crafted and suspenseful psychological thriller which kept me reading until late into the night, unable to put the book down before I could find out the outcome. What begins as the last day of a wonderful holiday for a loving married couple, Trudy and Bruce Harrison, soon turns into a nightmare when they innocently stumble into the lair of a depraved sexual predator and killer, disguised as an art gallery and tourist attraction along Australia's scenic Great Ocean Road. Drugged, abused and traumatised the couple barely mange to escape with their own lives, but with the burden of Bruce having killed their attacker in their struggle for survival. With Bruce having fared worst in the attack, his shame and reluctance to tell the whole story stops them from contacting the police until days later. However, the couple's story is met with disbelief by authorities, who are unable to find anything sinister in the location described. Which only leaves one explanation: the killer had not acted alone, and someone may still be out there, watching them ....For me, the strength of the story lay in the way the author explores how extraordinary things can happen to innocent, ordinary people, irrevocably changing their lives forever. The slow unravelling of the normal life of an everyday law-abiding couple, and the events which finally push them across previous held boundaries of moral and ethical guidelines and beliefs, chilled me to the bone. So plausible was the author's plot, and so well explored were the thoughts and feelings of the novel's main protagonists, that I could easily put myself in their shoes and feel their utter sense of terror and disbelief as things slowly spin out of control, like a small pebble dislodging a huge landslide. Decisions made in fear and out of self-preservation soon have horrific consequences the couple would not have been able to imagine in their darkest nightmares. Interspersed with descriptions of ordinary family live, the events unfolding take on an even more sinister character.With its setting in Australia, the story seemed even more real to me, conjuring up vivid images of the places described in the book. I had to blink to remind myself that I was reading the book in the safety of my own home. To call the plot simple would be doing it a huge injustice, but its seeming simplicity, or ordinariness, is its greatest asset. This could easily happen to any of us, which makes it more terrifying than a lot of the graphic action packed thrillers I have read this year. This is a brilliant, suspenseful novel - highly recommended to any lover of psychological thrillers. I will be looking out for more from this author.