Sarah Lawton’s debut novel, All The Little Things,1 quite rightly made a splash when it was published. All The Little Things was a tense and tightly written psychological thriller. A Drowning Tide,2 Lawton’s second crime novel, equally tense and tightly written, skilfully takes you on a rather different reading experience, providing a puzzle within a puzzle, quite literally.
The main protagonist, Merry, sets cryptic crosswords, and there is a crossword clue at the start of every chapter - solve the clues and part of the solution to the plot gradually unfolds.
Merry is a carefully equivocal character - she has an ambiguous relationship with the family in the ‘big house’ in the Isle of Wight village where she lives, and only really seems at ease on her own, in her wetsuit, swimming in the icy sea off the coast of the island (an occupation the author apparently delights in herself, and writes about extraordinarily evocatively - to the extent, I am happy to say, that I don’t feel I will ever have to experience it more closely than through her words).
When Lucas, the son of Merry’s close friend Julia, goes missing, various skeletons start creeping out of cupboards, not least from Merry’s own desperately hidden past. Merry’s rigidly protected privacy is gradually eroded by these revelations, and by the warm, persistent presence of a private investigator, Gareth Jones, who is also looking for Lucas.Â
The final revelations come suddenly, brutally, and almost fatally for Merry, in a breathtaking finale which leaves both Merry and Gareth finally finding their way to a safe and settled haven, with the beguiling promise for the reader of the possibility of more explorations to come for this unlikely duo. I, for one, hope so.
All The Little Things, Sarah Lawton (Canelo, 2021)
A Drowning Tide, Sarah Lawton (Black and White Publishing, 2024)