The psychological thriller is much in vogue at the moment and, for some reason, appears to be the particular stamping ground of women writers. Perhaps it has something to do with a desire for the emasculation of men, for invariably in these books the fiend is male, the victims female, and the avenging fury who brings the killer to book a strong woman showing no mercy.
I suppose Patricia Cornwell leads the pack in America, while in Britain Ruth Rendell is the queen, with acolytes such as Val McDermid, Minette Walters and Frances Fyfield crowding in behind her in close pursuit. The only Irish practitioner I can think of off-hand is Sheila Barrett, but now Julie Parsons has thrown her hat - or should I say Stanley knife? - into the ring, and may God have mercy on any poor male scribe unwary enough to go up against her. Her novel starts out almost in a desultory fashion, with a woman ringing her local Garda station to announce that her daughter Mary has not come home. The fact is duly noted, but when the recording sergeant finds that said daughter is 20 years old, he treats the missing person report rather lightly. However, when the girl fails to appear over the following days a more serious view is taken, culminating in an all-out manhunt. Her body turns up in the canal.
The mother is Margaret Mitchell - yes, there is a joky reference to Gone with the Wind - who has just returned from New Zealand in order to nurse her dying mother, Catherine. A qualified psychiatrist, she has been working in mental institutions in the Antipodes, but is now residing in the family home in Monkstown. She is nominally a widow, but it turns out that she has fabricated a dead husband in order to satisfy her daughter's curiosity and to damp down her own father's disapproval at the time of the birth. As in many books of this type, the identity of the psychopath is known quite early on in the story, the dramatic tension thus having to be generated in other quarters. On this occasion the killer is Jimmy Fitzsimons, an angelic-looking young man who suspects, quite rightly as it turns out, that his elder sister is in fact his mother. He also has a Down's Syndrome sibling named Molly, who dotes on him, a rich stepfather and a supposed mother who doesn't particularly care for him.
In spite of the fact that our protagonist is a practising psychiatrist, no scientific or medical reasons are given for Jimmy's psychosis. He is simply a baddie who gets off on brutalising young girls, and as such has to be punished in the Old Testament manner of fire and brimstone. The policeman on his trail is Detective Inspector Michael McLaughlin, a man with a Sisyphus boulder of his own to bear. His marriage to Janey has become cold and arid, and he has taken to the drink to drown his sorrows. He is, though, one of the better-drawn characters in the book, and his growing attachment to the bereaved mother is very sympathetically delineated. Having tortured and murdered the daughter, Jimmy next sets out to torment the mother, but an abrupt halt is put to his posturings when a former victim of his comes to the police station and informs on him. He is arrested and tried, but, because of a technical mistake, is subsequently released. Then it is the turn of his new victim to seek vengeance, and this she achieves in no uncertain manner.
Although there is no denouement as such, there is a twist in the tail - one, of course, that I shall not give away, but will merely say, beware the sins of the father. Ms Parsons has written a tautly constructed and engrossing story and, for a first novelist, shows technical know-how and a rare expertise. Inevitably there are things in the book to make the stomach churn, but gratuitousness is kept to a minimum, with the violence becoming a necessary part of the narrative. Not, on the whole, an easy read, but a thought-provoking one.
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