![\"thelifeileftbehind\"](\"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/thelifeileftbehind.jpg\")
<\/a>In McBeth\u2019s The Life I Left Behind<\/em>, the lovely Melody is a virtual prisoner in her (admittedly beautiful) home, engaged to the handsome, successful Sam, but she\u2019s still traumatized by a brutal attack that left her for dead six years previously. When another woman is found murdered under eerily similar circumstances, Melody is finally spurred out of her lethargy, and her story becomes linked with the dead woman\u2019s, Eve. Eve is a partial narrator, as is Melody, and the book goes back and forth between them.<\/p>\nAs the book progresses, it\u2019s clear Melody\u2019s personality has completely changed \u2013 she was a busy career woman, living in the heart of London, enjoying a wild social life; she\u2019s now a stay at home partner, busy decorating, planning her wedding, and cooking elaborate meals. All is ordered and planned online as she can\u2019t bear to leave the house alone.<\/p>\n
Making Melody\u2019s jolt the greater, the man who was accused of her attack has just been released from prison \u2013 just in time to have killed Eve. As Melody looks into Eve\u2019s death on her own, it becomes clear that Eve, a television producer, was busy working on clearing the man\u2019s name and had made a breakthrough just before she was killed.<\/p>\n
McBeth takes the reader deep into the minds of both women, and you are hearing the story shaded by their perceptions of events. As Melody gets access to Eve\u2019s case notes, which are extensive, it really becomes difficult to stop reading as each segment of the narrative reveals something new.<\/p>\n
While I thought I knew where the end of the book was heading I was surprised, and happily so, as this author had carefully laid the groundwork for her clever and memorable denouement. I won\u2019t forget the characters or this story anytime soon.<\/p>\n
McKenzie\u2019s novel is the story of Livy Jackson, who lost her sister Kara during college, and as the book opens, is bravely attending a work party where she\u2019ll come face to face with her husband\u2019s mistress. Though their affair has been over for a number of years, Livy is still nervous, and ignores calls from her friend Julia. To her eternal regret.<\/p>\n When her husband, Will, is called away on a business trip, Livy packs up the kids for a weekly get together with Julia and finds her dead, an apparent suicide. I\u2019ve read few mysteries where a suicide is actually a suicide and this one is no exception, though it\u2019s only Livy who\u2019s sure that Julia was murdered.<\/p>\n As she starts to look into it she meets Julia\u2019s mysterious boyfriend \u2013 she only referred to him as \u201cDirty Blond\u201d, though his name is, in fact, Damian, and he\u2019s sure Julia was murdered as well. The investigation drives Livy and Will apart as he\u2019s suspicious of Damian, and Livy becomes suspicious of him and his former mistress. She feels there\u2019s no one she can trust.<\/p>\n Trust is in fact the theme of the novel, and all in all I\u2019d say McKenzie is a more sophisticated storyteller than McBeth, but both write books impossible to put down and both provided excellent endings, with McKenzie\u2019s being a real knockout. Though I\u2019d figured out whodunit shortly before the actual reveal, the suspense was so great it didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n If these women follow in the footsteps of great female writers like Armstong, Eberhart and Fremlin, they have wonderful writing careers ahead of them. As it is, both have already gifted me with hours of reading pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I read, I often mentally try to categorize, to fit what I\u2019m reading into a mystery context, wondering about the predecessors of what I\u2019m reading. When I first picked up Colette McBeth\u2019s book, I was thinking Ruth Rendell; but then I started Sophie McKenzie\u2019s book and it all fell into place. These women aren\u2019t … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-1624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1627,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions\/1627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>I then immediately picked up Sophie McKenzie\u2019s You Can Trust Me<\/em> as I\u2019d read her first novel straight through on a train trip last summer (Close My Eyes<\/em> is now available in paperback). The similarities to McBeth\u2019s book became obvious: the central female character in jeopardy, the devotion to old fashioned storytelling, with a twist and surprise around every corner. I would give a little gasp at the end of each chapter and be forced to read on.<\/p>\n