Listen to the Shadows

by Danuta Reah

Book Overview

Underneath the shadow of an antique waterwheel in a city park, a young woman's body is found. The case is assigned to Detective Inspector Steve McCarthy, a tenacious cop determined to do whatever it takes to see justice done. His only lead, however, is the woman who found the victim, Suzanne Milner. Battling her own demons, Suzanne is reluctant to get involved and gives McCarthy nothing but maddening evasions to his questions. Stymied by clues that...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061031348
• ISBN13: 9780061031342
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: HarperTorch
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Dark, disturbing and gripping

A lot of thrillers can leave the reader with a sense of dissatisfaction. This one has real depth - it's a book I could easily read more than once, and find more in it on the next read. It has all the right elements for a mystery - it's scary and exciting, and the ending surprised me. But it also had characters of great psychological depth. Suzanne is a woman who has problems realting to her child and is struggling with terrible guilts from her past, the cop, Steve McCarthy, is interestingly ambivalent, and Lucy, the little girl, is a tour-de-force. It is really difficult to write children realistically - Lucy is a great creation. The story moves slowly but inexorably through its dark, urban setting to a real edge-of-the-seat conclusion in a derelict block of flats in the city centre. This is powerful stuff

For anyone tired of simple plots & 1 dimensional characters

As a mystery reader, I have found it increasingly difficult to find new authors with a more sophisticated style that challenges the reader. This book kept me up late reading for several nights because I needed to know what would develop next. I highly recommend this book to lovers of complex characters. The author has a great ability get the tone of each character exactly right. When reading the parts from the 6yr old character's perspective, I was hearing a real child's thoughts and fears. Read this book if you are tired of all the simple plots and one dimensional characters. The author's characters remind me of those in Ian Rankin's Rebus books. You will remember this book!

Fragile, flawed, unusual heroine

A new voice in the literate tradition of British psychological suspense, Reah explores the claustrophobic world of her unusual heroine and the reality that feeds a child's fantasies in this debut novel.Suzanne Milner's guilt over the death of her jailed younger brother years earlier affects every aspect of her life. Motherhood paralyzes her with fear, her marriage has been destroyed, and she devotes her life to helping youth by studying how communication disorders contribute to delinquency. When her friend's daughter, Lucy, briefly goes missing, Suzanne falls apart, and, wandering, discovers the body of the child's sitter under an old water wheel in the park. She also destroys her own study project, perhaps her career, by blurting a subject's name to the police - she'd seen someone in the park who reminded her of this boy - but wasn't him.The police set up a hue and cry for the boy, who disappears. Suzanne loses her job. Lucy draws incomprehensible pictures of monsters and talks of imaginary friends and villains in the park. Another girl turns up missing. The taciturn, lonely police detective, Steve McCarthy, finds himself attracted to prickly, vulnerable, evasive Suzanne while exploring the various ways families (or the lack of) can damage a child and blight a life.Moody, atmospheric and unsettling, the novel's pacing is a little slow but thoroughly absorbing. It's difficult to make a flawed, neurotic protagonist like Suzanne appealing and sympathetic in such a dark story but Reah manages it, and even allows her a ray of hope to go on with.

a good dark mystery

This is a rather unsettling and dark mystery novel that centers on psychologically disturbed teenagers and dysfunctional familial relationships. However, "Listen To The Shadows" is also a very interesting and absorbing read, and in spite of the fact that the prose style is sometimes a little heavy going, I'd urge anyone who picks up this book to plough on: it's worth the effort.Suzanne Milner is a graduate student who is currently working on the thesis that a lack of communication skills and violence is somehow interlinked. In order to see if her premise holds any credibility, Suzanne has been allowed to work with the troubled male teens of the Alpha Project. However all her excitement and enthusiasm for her research comes to a crashing halt when her neighbour and best friend, Jane's six year old, Lucy, and her baby-sitter, Emma, go missing one day. Suzanne had been jogging in the park that both Emma and Lucy had gone missing from, and Suzanne thinks she saw one of the teens she's currently working with moving about furtively in the park. Motivated by curiosity as well as fear, Suzanne goes back to the park, and discovers the body of the dead baby-sitter under the antique water-wheel. Investigation into Emma's past reveals that she had misrepresented herself to Jane, and that Jane's previous baby-sitter, who had been a friend of Emma's is also missing. D.I. Steve McCarthy, who has been assigned to the case is determined to discover who murdered Emma; unfortunately he is hampered by the fact his only witness to the crime is a six year old who seems to be obsessed with monsters that live in the park. He also feels that Suzanne knows far more than she is revealing. Unlukily for McCarhty, Suzanne has had unfortunate dealing with the police, and is reluctant to be more forthcoming. And for D.I. McCarthy it is becoming a race against time to see if he can make sense of Suzanne's evasions in order to apprehend a murderer. And then the body of another young woman is found in the park. Will Suzanne be able to put her reservations about the police behind her in order to stop a very twisted murderer from striking again?"Listen To The Shadows" is a rather dark and disturbing mystery novel about need, desire, dysfunctional familial relationships, and children. The plot premise is an interesting and riveting one -- each new development in the investigation opened a whole host of possibilities, as to suspects and motive. And while Danuta Reah's prose style is sometimes a little heavy handed, the effort made not to skim pages really paid off. This is a really absorbing and brilliant read, that will tax the brain cells and keep you riveted for hours!

A haunting gothic -like mystery

Suzanne Milner lived in Sheffield, England all her life and is very familiar with the local judicial system, especially involving juveniles. When her mother died, her father informed her that she would become a surrogate parent to her brother Adam. Suzanne did her best, but alas Adam fell in with a bad crowd and was eventually caught in an illegal act. When the police asked Suzanne where her brother was hiding, she told them. Adam was caught and incarcerated to a short stay at a juvenile facility. He could not handle the place and killed himself. Her father blamed Suzanne for Adam's death.Years later, Suzanne realized she is incapable of taking care of her own child and gives up custody to her husband. She starts life anew, but is quickly torn asunder when she finds the murdered corpse of the baby-sitter of her neighbor's child. She is drawn into a homicide investigation that eerily reminds her of her self as the sins of the father is inflicted on the child.MP>Fans of Elizabeth Peters will want to read Danuta Reah's excellent police procedural. LISTEN TO THE SHADOWS comes down squarely on the nurturing side of the psychological debate between environment and hereditary. The characters are three-dimensional and the story line is very entertaining. The adjustments of the cast to what life throws at them is also very realistic and shows that Ms. Reah knows much about human nature. This author has the talent to take her to the top.<p><p>Harriet Klausner