A Tidy Ending: The latest dark comedy from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Product Information

So we’re in Linda’s head the whole time. She has funny thoughts, and they are entertaining—some of the time. The problem is, I got claustrophobic as hell. Let me out of this strange, passive woman’s head, please! I need a breather. I need someone else’s perspective, I need interaction, I need dialogue, a change of scenery.

A highly entertaining thriller with a huge, warm, beating human heart and a central character that stays with you long, long after reading. I loved it.” — Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat Rebecca (Karen), was the daughter of one of the girls who accused her father. Still cannot be certain if the father was guilty of anything, I think he was OR could it be that Linda was jealous of the time he spent with those other girls and she chose what she said to the police purposely? The whole story is narrated by Linda. She works at a charity shop, doesn’t really have friends (she’s a shy, awkward sort of person who is often overlooked) and likes cleaning and Jaffa cakes. From the start I wondered if she was a reliable narrator but she’s entirely convincing. There’s a dark story concerning her father in her childhood, this is slowly revealed. She and Terry have watched the news, seen the press conference about the killing. They are an odd pair, as he is a slob who seems to live to drink beer and litter while Linda lives to daydream and clean. She scrubs everything and begrudges every spot or stain. She has plans. This book reads/listens very smoothly, the writer kept you engaged and gave you all the insights needed to follow the story. The narration was really great.

A Tidy Ending

Linda lives a nice, normal life, on a nice, normal street with Terry, her perfectly ordinary husband.

Who are the people who are seeing the world how it really is and who are the people that are mistaken? How do you know which way around it is?’” Two mysteries unfold simultaneously in the book: the identity of the serial killer, and the truth about Linda’s father. What do we learn about him from Linda’s narration, and what can we guess from context? How does Linda feel about her father, and why?A compellingly crafted, darkly funny and compulsive read, full of twists’ – Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry About the Author, Joanna Cannon Come on, open your eyes! Linda, like many other main characters with the “quirky” label (probably on the spectrum), has this annoying cluelessness despite the fact she seems astute sometimes. It prevented me from feeling anything for Linda.

Delicious . . . thoroughly engrossing. . . . This book didn't just stay with me. It stayed and stayed and stayed.” — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune Linda is the narrator of the story via a shifting timeline and as the central character, we see events from her perspective. Following a troubled childhood, when Linda and her mother left their old life in Wales, she has tried to reinvent herself. However her marriage to Terry is rather a disappointment and the recent house move on the same estate which she thought would bring a whole new way of life has not turned out that way. Its just the same life in a different house. Heightened thriller plots frequently rub shoulders with compassionate portraits of ordinary lives in the work of Joanna Cannon. But while her bestselling debut, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, successfully used a resident’s disappearance to tease out a community’s secrets, the crime thriller element in her latest novel skews much darker, upsetting the balance. The story gets even more interesting when a body of a young woman is found nearby and it doesn’t end there. Locals have the jitters and the whole awful affair feels too close for comfort. The chapters are mostly in the past with the murders and Linda’s preoccupation, but there also “now” chapters where Linda is in the present, foreshadowing what may have happened in the past.Deliciously sinister and irresistibly tense. The creepiest, cleverest, most haunting mystery you will read all year. Absolutely brilliant.” — Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life Rebecca was one of the girls from Wales. Suspect she found her and deliberately bought her house. Am sure there's something about letting Terry think he wanted it but it was her idea.