DECEIT

A very British tale of a widow who struggles to hold her family from splintering apart, to keep the circumstances of her husband’s loss at sea a secret, and to avoid being snared in a police investigation surrounding the supposed shipwreck.

After three months’ abroad, Ellen has finally returned with her two children to their south England town to oversee the memorial service for her husband, Harry, a former member of Parliament and real-estate mogul who was lost at sea two weeks before Ellen’s travels. The service over, Harry’s body and boat are still not found, and Ellen is immediately ensnared in family and business loose ends surrounding his disappearance. His relatives nag her about why she set out traveling so quickly after her husband’s boat went missing. Her accountant, despairing of the terrible financial mess Harry has left behind, questions whether there are any hidden family funds to live on. At first, and for perhaps a trifle too long, author Francis (A Dark Devotion, 1998; Betrayal, 1996; etc.) gives hints of suspense, leading us through a moody story of a widow dealing with probate when there is no body to prove the death. Then a charity worker accuses Harry of having misappropriated £300,000, a piece of hate mail arrives accusing him of Falklands War misdoings, and evidence emerges that he might have sexually abused his adopted daughter (from Ellen’s first marriage). Suddenly, Harry is not just an amateur yachtsman who went to sea in the wrong weather but a possible suicide or murder victim, with his wife, in the case of the latter, one of the chief suspects. It’s Ellen’s contortions of the truth, either trying to protect her children from the shame of her late husband’s misdoings or to protect herself from being charged with murder—Francis keeps us unsure which—that lends this book its title.

Pleasantly enjoyable, especially for its mounting suspense in the latter half.