Title: The Watcher
Original Title: Der Beobachter (German)
Author: Charlotte Link
Translator: Stefan Tobler
Pages: 416
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐
The story leads us
to follow a disparate set of people who seem unconnected at the outset.
The novel begins
with two elderly women, Carla Roberts and Anne Westley who live alone and are
isolated from friends and family. Carla, a divorcee, lives on the top floor of
a high-rise building while Anne, a widow, lives alone in a beautiful cottage on
the edge of town. Both women die horrible and brutal deaths, at the hands of an
unknown killer.
DI Peter Fielder
and DS Christy McMarrow are unable to solve the mystery of these deaths.
There is Gillian
Ward, a beautiful and accomplished woman who, along with her husband, Tom,
manages the business they have both set up together. But Gillian feels
increasingly alienated from Tom who is more committed to his business and his
tennis than to his wife. Their 12-year-old daughter Becky is resentful and rude
towards her mother.
Feeling unloved
and resentful, Gillian finds herself driven into the arms of John Burton,
Becky’s tennis trainer, who was once a police officer who had to leave Scotland
Yard under suspicious circumstances. Those circumstances relate to an accusation
relating sexual aggression against a young woman.
Gillian confides
in her closest friend, Tara Caine, a lawyer, about the fact that she has
strayed out of her marriage, and about how conflicted she is regarding her
feelings for John. Soon after this, Tom is murdered in his own home.
Accusation falls
upon Samson Segal, an unemployed 34-year-old man who lives with his brother
Gavin and sister-in-law Millie in the house the two brothers have inherited
from their parents. Samson is shy and reclusive and lacks confidence. He longs
for a happy family of his own, a career which brings him joy, but he does not
have the drive to reach out for these things. He spends almost all his free
time watching the Wards, especially Gillian, who he longs for but not at the
cost of breaking up her family.
Could Samson have
caused the death of Tom or is he being framed for the murder by someone else?
Will the police be able to solve this crime?
There were just too many characters in this novel, and we received detailed back stories to almost all of them, which made for tedious reading. Even the inspector had a thing for his sergeant, which was pointless from the point of the story.
The characters were
connected to each other in such flimsy ways that it didn’t really hold my
interest.
The portion that
describes the killings from the killer’s point of view were in the past perfect
tense, which increases the distance between the reader and the event being
described.
Much of the book went
on and on. It would have been better if the book had been cut short by 100
pages.
The novel raised several
social issues such as loneliness and isolation, being uncared for, the
difficulties in marriages and relationships, parenting challenges, sexual abuse,
even paedophilia, etc, but none of them were dealt with in a convincing manner.
The conclusion seemed forced to me.
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