All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew
All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All the Hidden Truths has won this year’s ‘Bloody Scotland’s Debut Crime Novel of the Year’ and it was well deserved!
The novel is a multi point of view set-up and is based firmly on three women, Ishbel, Moira and DI Birch and focuses on their thoughts and reactions to the main event of the story.
A young man goes into his college one morning and shoots dead 13 of his classmates then turns the gun on himself. The story revolves mainly about the search to find out the reason why he committed such a horrible crime, his mother Moira’s response, how Ishbel copes with losing her daughter, and the investigation of the crime which DI Birch is in charge off.
I found the premise for this novel to be inventive and unusual. The crime has taken place, we know who did it, there is no one to catch, but it would be very difficult to find out the reason why Ryan Summers had killed 13 people. A shooting like this, especially when set in Scotland, feels surreal even though we have experienced what happened in Dunblane. Unfortunately, due to the world we now live in US school shooters seem like something we are always seeing on the news. It feels as if it’s a very brave topic to address, especially for a debut novel. But Askew deals with it in a such empathic manner that you forget about the horror of the events and focus on the people involved and their lives. The characters are all complex and nuanced enough that you want to continue to find out more, even if you have to experience a whirlwind of emotions as you are reading. You feel as much pity and sorrow for the mother of the shooter as you do for the mother of the one of the victims.
Of course, there are side shoots from the main theme - cheating partners, death threats to Moira, drug dealing boyfriends and daughters. But the one which carries the most weight is that of the journalist Grant Lockley. He epitomises the worse of journalism, harassing the victims families and ultimately hacking into personal emails. He is a good character to hate!
The only thing I didn’t like was the twee last chapter which focuses on one of the victims on the day of the shooting. But if that is the only thing we are doing well!
Overall, this is an impressive debut novel and I would be keen to reading more by Askew. Luckily, her newest book in this series comes out tomorrow!
