Eager to Please Book

Many readers are admirers of the kind of crime narrative in which the central character is a police inspector or private detective. But the most cutting emotional insights are to be found in the crime novels in which the protagonists are ordinary people caught up in events that transform (or even destroy) their lives. And these books most closely rival serious literature in depth and psychological penetration. Minette Walters has made a speciality of this field, and it's hardly surprising that she is an enthusiastic backer of Julie Parsons, whose novel Eager to Please is one of the most astringent and involving entries in this field in many a year. Parsons has demonstrated her skills before in such powerfully wrought books as Mary, Mary and The Courtship Gift, but this new book demonstrates that her writing has acquired a rich new dimension of complexity and authority. Her protagonist Rachel Beckett has been in prison for 12 years for the murder of her husband Martin--and has spent the time protesting her innocence. The greatest torment for her has been the knowledge that another woman has raised her daughter Amy, and that (at the age of 17) Amy wants to cut all ties with her biological mother. When Rachel is freed, she has a single agenda: to revenge herself on her brother-in-law Daniel who she claims fired the shot that killed her husband. As a picture of an obsessed heroine, Eager to Please would be hard to beat, particularly as Parsons cleverly balances the two fixed ideas in her heroine's mind: the resentment at having her much-loved child taken from her, and the sense of burning injustice at being in prison for a crime she didn't commit. Rachel is a complex and multifaceted character, and as the revelations of the plot continue to pull the ground from beneath the reader's feet, the pleasures of the novel grow ever richer. The author is sharp, too, on the Dublin locales, which are atmospherically created, and the remorseless energy of the heroine (even though, at times, she's hard to like) makes this an exemplary thriller, delivered with real style. --Barry ForshawRead More