Why Aren't They Screaming?

There is another book before this one, but I have not read it and was able to follow the plot fine. Loretta Lawson is away enjoying peace and quiet in the country when she is pulled into a murder investigation. This leads to results that are less than ideal, as she is just an amateur sleuth. Well written and easy to follow.

I remember reading this and other books by Joan Smith quite a lot of years ago (just checked and it came out in 1988, so probably around then). I didn’t remember anything about the plot, though, except that I enjoyed it, and snapped it up with nostalgic alacrity (and not a little surprise) when I spotted it on NetGalley. (I recall a surge in feminist crime fiction around that era - much of which I consumed with enthusiasm - including Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series, Mary Wings, Barbara Wilson and much more.)

It’s certainly of its time, with a women’s peace camp at an American base in the Oxfordshire countryside playing a major role following the 1986 US bombing of Libya.

Protagonist Loretta Lawson is a sympathiser of the peace women, but not really part of that world - she’s an academic at a London university. Recovering from a bout of illness, Loretta accepts a friend of a friend’s kind offer of a few weeks’ stay at a country cottage to recuperate. But it doesn’t prove quite as restful as Loretta might have hoped; strange and alarming things happen from the outset, and things take a major turn for the worse when a body is found...

Set in what now feels like a long-forgotten world of Thatcherism, Ceefax, cassette tapes, and needing to find a phone box and a pile of ten pence pieces in order to make a call when out and about (Loretta has a mad dash around London looking for a working phone box at one point), there’s definitely a nostalgia factor for those of us old enough to remember the ‘80s. The actual plot is fine and did keep me guessing, though the ending is deliberately unsatisfying and certain actions of certain parties seem extraordinary.

Loretta herself is an engagingly imperfect heroine who reacts to danger pretty much like most of us probably would. I never entirely felt I had a grasp on her character - but then I haven’t read (or at least can’t remember) the first book in the series of which this is the second. I’d like to have seen a bit more of the peace camp, too.

All in all a very enjoyable read. Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!