‘The Blue Hour’ by Paula Hawkins

This is a mystery story written by the author who had a huge success with ‘The Girl on the Train’ back in 2015. I enjoyed this one rather more, principally because it is a less conventional murder mystery / thriller, but also because it is as much character-driven as plot-driven and is exceptionally well written. The final scene, in which a character is, let's say in order not to spoil anything, placed in a very perilous situation while drugged up, is told from that person's perspective. That passage is both original and superbly written.

The setting is another very effective element here. Most of the story unfolds on a small tidal island off the coast of Scotland on which sits a single house high up overlooking the open sea. Access is via a causeway across which a car can drive, but only when the tide is low. So people get trapped there for hours. The island's isolation and periodic inaccessibility are essential to the story, and it becomes almost another character in the novel.

The house, at least to start with, is owned by an artist – a poshish and beautiful Englishwoman called Vanessa Chapman. She paints, but also sculpts and makes ceramic items too in her studio close to the old house on the cliff. When the book starts she has fairly recently died and has left all her artwork to a foundation run by the equally posh son of a former lover, called Sebastian, who employs a much less posh university mate called Becker as his curator. We find out a lot about Vanessa, however, because extracts from her personal diary and letters etc are included in the narrative.

The premise of the plot is striking. A piece of Vanessa's artwork that Sebastian and Becker exhibit, a modern ‘mixed-media’ sculpture called ‘Division II’, turns out to include within it what looks to trained eyes like a human bone. Cue intriguing and quirky murder mystery storyline.

At the same time, and mixed up with this plot, is another concerning a woman who was for periods Vanessa's companion and whose relationship with her was emotionally ambiguous. This character is called Grace Haswell, and for me, it was her presence in this book that made it so compelling. There is a touch of the Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier's ‘Rebecca’ about her. She is intensely possessive and manipulative, her devotion to another woman having become inseparable from a desire to control her life and legacy. She is magnificently creepy, pretty amoral and so, so clever. I am not sure it quite worked to make her a retired GP, as she is really too monstrous a figure to have held down such a job for so long, but everything else about her as a fictional character is just splendid. She, it turns out, knows all the secrets concerning Vanessa's life and stormy personal relationships.

Aside from the plot, character and setting, this book is memorable because of the prevailing mood that permeates it and which is hard to do full justice to. It is very subtly done, and the title of the book – ‘The Blue Hour’ – sets this scene rather well, this being that brief period we get each day when there is still some light about after the sun has set. That is the all-pervading atmosphere. It is also an apt metaphor for a story in which so much remains half-hidden, and in which the distinction between what is real and what merely appears to be real is frequently uncertain.

This is a complex story, with several twists and turns, and more than a touch of the Gothic about it. But it is the characters, especially the wonderfully sinister Grace Haswell, and the brooding atmosphere that make it memorable. I was gripped pretty well from the start and thoroughly enjoyed the ride – even the gruesome bits.

A highly accomplished contemporary thriller that succeeds as much through the quality of its writing and characterisation as through the ingenuity of its plotting.