PLEASE don't read this until you've read the novel yourself ... I don't think I've given away any of the plot but I would hate to think that I had spoiled the enjoyment of the novel for anyone else.
I really wasn't sure I was going to even finish this book - the format is slightly unusual in that as well as narrative, it contains newspaper reports, police reports and other similar things which tended to make the first few chapters very repetitive. This continued throughout the novel, which to start with made me feel that the narrative flow was being interrupted, and the novel seemed bitty. It also meant that the same facts were being repeated over and over again, and initially I felt that this was going to make for very boring reading.
It did pick up though, and I found myself more interested in the story - although I wasn't too keen on the writing. As a psychological thriller it was neither psychological nor thrilling enough for me, although the story itself was interesting in parts. The way the plot panned out was well done; from hazy beginnings the threads are brought together in a skilful way. However I found the storyline improbable and rather surreal, and the ending was pretty disappointing as it was rather convoluted and came from nowhere - on the one hand it kept me guessing, but on the other hand it's nice to be able to work out whodunnit (and what they actually did!) yourself, and I felt slightly cheated that the ending came so far out of left field.
Some of the characterisations within the novel are interesting; Walters cleverly keeps the reader's view of the heroine very ambiguous, and right up until the end the reader is never quite sure whether she really is as she seems, and although her father is an important force within the novel, we never meet him. I did feel that some of the characters were rather one-dimensional though, and there were certainly some lazy stereotypes.
This is not a novel I would have chosen, and if it weren't for the fact I needed to write this I probably wouldn't even have finished reading it. On the whole it was reasonably enjoyable, if not the finest piece of writing ever - although I won't be in too much of a hurry to buy up all of Minette Walters' other novels!