Beholden

Rating:
Summary: Beholden
Review: A claustrophobic, unnerving little crime novel that starts moving in a fairly predictable direction as it scuttles towards conclusion. This one would likely appeal to Ruth Rendell fans--though I was also reminded, a bit, of Fredric Brown's quiet chiller called The Far Cry. In that book, as in this, the protagonist allows himself to become infected with obssession over a missing woman.

First-time novelist Clare Littleford gives us Pete Williams, who routinely rides the double-decker bus to and from his dead-end job as planning officer at the Nottingham City Council. He has taken an interest in a young lady who also rides the bus in question--not enough interest to actually chat with her, but enough to get the bus-driver to wait for he if she's been late showing up to board. Her trademark behaviour has been to write in a notebook while riding along, and when, one fateful morning, the woman dashes off the bus at the "wrong" stop, accidently leaving the notebook behind, Pete finally gets to see what she's been scribbling. He claims the notebook and begins reading through it. When it becomes clear that the woman--Sophie--has disappeared, he actively probes the angst-ridden notebook entries for clues as to what's happened to her.

Somewhere along the line, though, Pete's curiosity over a missing woman with a disturbing past--a woman he has never met--tips over into a sort of mania. Sophie's shadow, in the form of her diary, begins to ruin Pete's life. He tries to find out what happened to her, disrupting his own life at work, and presenting the wrong image to his girlfriend, Alison. When he realizes he should have just given up Sophie's notebook, and stayed out of it, it's far too late.

The simple style of Beholden is gripping. Peter Williams is a strong main character, as is Sophie, even in absentia. And in the first two thirds of the book, developments seem unexpected, intriguing, subtly malevolent, as if something truly terrible has happened in the shadows, and Pete is stepping too close to it. But there comes a point where the story--never very complex, and consisting of the same sorts of domestic, office, and pub scenes starting to repeat--becomes fairly transparent. Putting it simply: it gets a bit obvious where things are going. As a result, the book never really loses its eerie feel, but I certainly didn't get the physical chill up my spine that Fredric Brown gave me in The Far Cry.

I was hoping for something more than just the most logical--if unsettling--Last Act.

Worth a look for those who are really loyal to the "pyschological thriller".