Can Anybody Help Me? by Sinéad Crowley
Quercus, July 2015
Book 1 of Claire Boyd trilogy
Disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher.
I’ve been trying out quite a few new-to-me authors who are female in the past year, and I’ve specifically taken on old and new writers who write domestic suspense. I liked this book particularly because I liked the lead detective, Guard Claire Boyle, who is quite pregnant during the course of the novel.
Can Anybody Help Me? is a book about a series of murders committed against fellow members of an online parenting and pregnancy support group site netmammy. This particular brand of domestic suspense is quite claustrophobic or laced with a touch of post-partum depression with a number of characters navigating the world of new parenthood. I found the book to be a brisk read: the parenting forums are quite familiar and feel real, there are a reasonable number of plot twists, and though I had a short list of suspects, it was still an enjoyable read.
Other reviews appear in Reviewing the Evidence and Crime Thriller Girl.