Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

 

The lives of four women become intertwined when a care home manager is murdered and one of the residents goes missing. Could the events be linked to the disappearance of a baby twenty years previously?

Right from the opening chapter, Good Bad Girl from Alice Feeney has you gripped. Set twenty years ago we witness a woman who seems to be suffering from post-natal depression struggling with her young baby. On a trip to the supermarket, the baby is snatched.

We then jump to the present day and meet four very different women. Frankie is probably the most intriguing of the bunch. She works as a librarian in a women's prison but, we immediately learn that she is walking out on her job without telling anyone. Frankie has a task to carry out. However, the actual task isn't made clear.

Patience is a young woman, barely eighteen, who is working in an old people's home. She has dreams of going to art college but is doing the job to make ends meet. Patience has struck up a friendship with one of the residents, Edith, and smuggles treats into the home for her, along with her dog which isn't allowed into the home.

Edith is my favourite character. Eighty years old, she was forced to leave her home and move into the care home by her daughter, Clio. Edith wants nothing more than to go back to her own home, but her daughter is adamant that she can't live on her own. Edith is feisty, refusing to accept that although her mind may still be extremely agile, her body isn't.

Clio is the least likeable of the four main characters. Early on, I took a dislike to her because of the way she treats her mother. Clio doesn't seem to have any time or love for her mother, simply seeing her as a financial burden.

Over a period of a few days, the lives of the four women are thrown into turmoil. The manager of Edith's care home is murdered. Any one of them had a motive for the murder and the opportunity. As the police track down each of them, we discover more about their past lives. Their stories become entwined, spiraling like water down a plug-hole.

As little snippets of information about each person is revealed, you begin to assemble the pieces of the story, only to discover your assumptions are wrong. Alice Feeney has taken the art of misdirection to another level, leaving you with lots of "OMG" moments. The bittersweet conclusion draws all the threads together, making you re-evaluate your initial opinions of some of the characters.

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney will be published on 3rd August 2023 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for a review copy.