There have been many novels written about children who are abducted, who have gone missing, who are held captive say in a school building, and all of these are suspenseful, particularly so probably because young children are involved. Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips was one of the best of this genre. Rosamund Lupton (author of the wonderful Quality of Silence), also wrote one of these suspense novels with her Three Hours, of a shooting in an exceptionally liberal school in Somerset with children barricading themselves into buildings and the working out of the psychology of the killer. Mara’s No One Saw A Thing is not dissimilar, starting off with how a mum from Ireland, Sive, visiting London with her family for her husband’s reunion, loses one of her 3 children on the London underground.
One of the fun things about this novel is how it is sited in the London underground stations, which makes it a familiar setting for many readers. Sive is pushing a pram with baby Toby in it, and also has her 2 little girls in tow, 2 year old Bea, and 6 year old Faye. She is in Bond Street station catching the Central Line train, and it is packed with people.
But here she is, pushing the pram with one hand manoueuvring it out of the lift and on to the hot-crowded rush-hour platform, trying to see who is phoning her at 8.30 a.m. when she’s supposed to be off work, ‘Keep going, Faye – jump on with Bea!‘ she calls after her six-year old daughter as the two girls, hand in hand, approach the open Tube doors, ‘I’m right behind you!’ (p1).
The two girls jump on the train as instructed, and although only a few feet behind, Sive sees the tube carriage doors slide shut before she can get on too.,
Her children inside looking out. Sive outside looking in” (p2).
Mara is quite good at building suspense and writing the action scenes, keeping the sentences short and punchy. It is a little sensationalistic and a little contrived sometimes, but still effective.
Sive does what any sensible person would do, which is to try to get her girls to understand they need to get off at the next station (Oxford Circus) and wait for her. She hopes one of the passengers would understand her and help get the children off at the next stop. Sive immediately reports it to an official who radios to tell the system that two children are separated from their mum. Sive takes the next train to Oxford Circus, where she sees Bea, but no Faye. Little Bea is unable to tell Sive much, except Faye is gone, and she also says the word ‘chase’, which confuses Sive – is Faye being chased? Was Faye chasing something or someone? Later they wonder if Bea is referring to her favourite character on Paws Patrol, a police dog called Chase.
The structure of the novel goes back and forth in time between the current happenings of Faye going missing, and 3 days before the incident, when Sive and high-flying lawyer husband Aaron, and the 3 children arrive in London. It also goes back and forth to a time about 20 years ago when Aaron and the housemates he is reuniting with, were in university.
Scott with his needling and sparring. Dave with his long-drawn out stories. Nita with her narcissistic tendencies. And Maggie – well – Maggie was lovely” (p138)
and of course, over-achiever, Aaron, and his fiancée, the kind and beautiful Yasmin, also Nita’s sister. The writing style lends itself to caricatures and stereotyping of characters into their boxes, and then undermines these typecasts, to make the reader feel they are standing on shifting sands, and things are not as they were represented initially, people not being what they seemed to be.
At first it is assumed Faye’s disappearance is something accidental, arbitrary, because, as Sive says, who could have known she and the children would be standing on that station that morning? But as time goes on, it is clear the solution lies closer to home, as most such incidents apparently do; that children are more usually than not taken by people known to them already, not by strangers. There are indeed people who knew where Sive and the children would be, namely these ‘friends’ who have come for the reunion. The plot throws doubt on each of them, and on Aaron particularly, given his on-going court case representing dangerous people who might have reason to want to harm him or his family. Everybody lies, everybody has things they want to keep under wraps, and seeing it largely through Sive’s eyes, she is our reliable narrator, who peels back layer upon layer of lies and deceptions dating all the way back into the days the housemates were living together, as well as the narratives which subsequently grew out of that.
Many twists and turns follow, but about half way in, it seems clear that it was no stranger who took Faye, and somehow, the level of suspense drops. One guesses it must be one of the known characters (one of the housemates) who took her, and as such, one’s anxiety levels for the child ratchets right down, knowing the child is safe, only being used as a pawn, but most likely unharmed. While this is a good thing, it is not so good for suspense-building. Still though, the pace is mostly maintained quite well right through, and it was a fast, easy read. Definitely superb for train/plane reading, it will keep you turning the pages.
‘Fierce Kingdom’ was so taut and well-written! I must look out for Three Hours, which you seem to have liked more than this one.