If you wish to read a book that leaves you with conflicting emotions about characters, crime, intentions, motives, and complicity, this is it.
The book by Kate Morton is a novel and as such strong on character development, settings, and storytelling. The crime is brutal and immediately draws you in the story.
The how initially baffles law enforcement.
Everyone has an opinion on why.
Until the last pieces of the puzzle are found.
Then, character actions from the past seem less clear-cut. The people who manipulated others under the guise of protection show their true intentions.
When the last puzzle pieces are found, the entire crime scene is finally revealed.
Several generations of the Turner Family tell the story about a crime that started before the scene was found in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, on Christmas Eve, in 1959.
In the small town of Tambilla, the dead bodies of Isabel Turner and all her children are found. Mathilda, John, and Evie lie like their mother on the beach. It looks like they had been swimming. The youngest, baby Thea, is missing from her crib.
Within a brief period, Isabel has been brandished a killer who initiated a suicide-murder pact. Was her own mother not an unstable woman? Did her husband Thomas not travel more often and further away from home? Had she not sought legal advice on guardianship? Did she not come across as depressed?
While the Turner Family deals with their issues, the family of Percy & Meg Summers battle their own problems. Their oldest, Kurt, was very fond of Mathilda. The parents fear how their son will take the news. But that is not all that simmers in the Summers family. Mathilda needs the help of her intelligent little sister Evie to find her a root to help her with a condition.
The book switches seamlessly between 1959 and 2018. Why?
Thomas Turner’s sister, Nora Turner-Bridges, was at the house when the crime happened. That trauma caused early labor. Born was Polly Turner who later became the mother to Jessica “Jess” Turner. From the age of ten, Jess was raised by Nora as Polly had moved north to get a better job. A temporary arrangement became permanent. In time, Jess moved to London for her own career. While there, she gets the call we all dread when our parents and caregivers get older. Nora is in the hospital. Not hesitating, Jess flies back to South Australia. Nora seemed to have fallen in a particular place in her house and Jess wants to know why.
During her own investigation of why Nora fell, what had happened to her in the days prior, Jess discovers the story of Nora’s brother and his family. Gathering documentations, doing research online, and looking at the crime scene through modern eyes, with modern technology options as suggested by experts, and with some sources still alive and remembering, Jess is determined to find out whether Isabel is a murderer or one of the victims. But if Isabel is not the murderer, who had a motive to kill a mother with three children? And did that killer also kidnap baby Thea?
When Jess reads that baby remains were found in the garden by people who rented the house, the plot thickens. Why kill a baby? What role did Thomas play if at all and were the rumors true that he had another family life on another continent?
When Nora dies and Jess becomes the executor of her will, she has access to more information. Very slowly her take on Isabel, Nora, and her mother Polly changes.
Kate Morton has written a very moving story where your initial thoughts and feelings for a character get questioned with every new revelation. Nothing is sprung on the reader, everything unfolds in the smallest increments until suddenly you, the reader, place that last puzzle piece down on the table. And because you cannot believe it you have to reread the last chapters. When it finally sinks in, you realize that you just read your favorite book of 2024.
Highly recommended reading.
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