Remain silent

Susie Steiner, 1971-

Book - 2020

"Newly married and navigating life with a toddler as well as her adopted adolescent son, Fly Dent, Manon Bradshaw is happy to be working part-time in the cold cases department of the Cambridgeshire police force, a job which allows her to "potter in, coffee in hand and log on for a spot of internet shopping--precisely what she had in mind when she thought of work-life balance." But beneath the surface Manon is struggling with the day-to-day realities of what she assumed would be domestic bliss: fights about whose turn it is to clean the kitchen, the bewildering fatigue of having a young child in her forties, and the fact that she is going to couple's counseling alone because her husband feels it would just be her complain...ing. But when Manon is on a walk with her two-year-old son, Teddy, in a peaceful suburban neighborhood and discovers the body of a Lithuanian immigrant hanging from a tree with a mysterious note attached, she knows her life is about to change. She is suddenly back on the job, full-force, trying to solve the suicide - or is it a murder - in what may be her most dangerous and demanding case yet"--

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Subjects
Genres
Mystery fiction
Detective and mystery fiction
Published
New York : Random House [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Susie Steiner, 1971- (author)
Edition
First U.S Edition
Item Description
Series numeration from www.goodreads.com.
Physical Description
306 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780525509974
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

This third Manon Bradshaw novel follows the acclaimed Persons Unknown (2017), which Val McDermid described as "like walking on quicksand, for reader and detective alike." Manon, a detective inspector with the Cambridgeshire, England, police, is still struggling to hold her life together, somehow succeeding within the chaos. While out walking with her toddler son, she finds a man's body hanging from a tree, revealed to be a Lithuanian agricultural worker. Having been working on cold cases, she is thrust full force into an investigation of what may be suicide or possible murder. What follows is a brutal study of the wretched existence of the victim, a Lithuanian immigrant, who was exploited by his handlers and subjected to anti-immigrant abuse. Manon and her team doggedly pursue justice despite the failings of a police system beset by poor administration and funding, and subject to the demands of the privileged. It's a quicksand of problems with no apparent solutions, but readers will be buoyed by the brilliance of Steiner's dark humor and the power of her narrative. Recommend this to fans of Kate Atkinson, Tana French, and, of course, Val McDermid.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of Steiner's sluggish third novel featuring Det. Insp. Manon Bradshaw (after 2018's Persons Unknown), Bradshaw, an officer on the Cambridgeshire, England, police force, discovers the body of a young man hanging from a tree in the park. Pinned to the victim's trousers is a note in Lithuanian that translates as "The dead cannot speak"; a card that may be a driver's license identifies him as Lukas Balsys, a Lithuanian immigrant. Bradshaw and her partner, Det. Sgt. Davy Walker, investigate what they suspect is a murder made to look like a suicide. Flashbacks show Lukas and other Lithuanians lured by promises of work to England, where a fellow Lithuanian, Eidikus, soon has them catching chickens in a filthy warehouse and living in toxic houses with bedbug-ridden mattresses on the floor. Two other men are hanged, and another dies in the warehouse. Some humor and the loving exchanges between Bradshaw and her husband provide relief from the grim crimes, but the plot meanders slowly. Steiner has done better. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

In her third outing after the best-booked Missing, Presumed and the multi-starred Persons Unknown, Det. Manon Bradshaw is working part-time in the cold cases department of the Cambridgeshire police. Then, walking around her quiet suburban neighborhood with her toddler, she comes across a Lithuanian immigrant dangling from a tree. Suicide? Murder? She's off and running.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Steiner's Manon Bradshaw is back on the case, looking to solve the murder of a migrant while seeking the elusive work-life balance. Manon finds herself, in her mid-40s, dealing with the highs and lows of living with her partner, Mark; her toddler, Teddy; and her adopted teenage son, Fly. When she returns to the Cambridgeshire police force to work on cold cases part-time, she misses the glory days of her time as a detective but also embraces the more flexible schedule (with more time for online shopping). But then she discovers a body hanging from a tree, and she's quickly pulled back into the thrill--and chaotic schedule--of active investigation. The dead man is a Lithuanian migrant, so Manon and her earnest partner, Davy, must confront the terrible living and working conditions of people who have come to England seeking better circumstances only to find themselves exploited and hated. As in her other Bradshaw mysteries, Steiner doesn't shy away from confronting the current political climate, and this time she also gives us an honest portrait of a woman, still endearingly human, faced with her own aging as well as the constant exhaustion of caring for her loved ones, pursuing a career, and dealing with a family health crisis. Steiner continues the structure from her previous novels of delivering different chapters from different third-person perspectives, but while this decision adds necessary backstory, it also relegates Manon this time to a more supporting role--and in doing so, makes her feel almost like a caricature of herself rather than a dynamic force of nature with a giant heart. In this case, differentiation has muted, rather than intensified, the novel's energy. Still savvy, sharp, and smart but a step down from Steiner's previous books. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Day 1, Midnight Matis *** His key in the door, he shoulders across the threshold, stumbles wildly up the stairs to the bathroom. He can't risk being beaten for soiling the carpet. His stomach is coiling and despite it being empty, he vomits into the toilet: acid bile. In a strange way, the retching comforts him. Dimitri is at the bathroom's open doorway. "Are you all right?" he asks. Matis, kneeling by the toilet bowl, groans. Dimitri approaches. "Too much to drink?" he asks. When Matis turns to look up at him, Dimitri says, "My God, what happened to you?" "Lukas is dead," Matis sobs. "I brought him here and now he's dead. I never saw such hatred, Dimitri. Why do they hate us so much?" Dimitri shrugs sadly. "I hope he haunts them out of their beds at night," says Matis. "To be haunted, you must have a conscience," says Dimitri. "And they have none." Dimitri lifts him to his feet. "Come, you need a drink." In the kitchen, while Dimitri locates vodka, Matis starts shaking. Dimitri says, "The police here, they will look into it properly. Not like back home." He hands Matis the bottle. Matis swigs. Winces. It burns his sore stomach. "It won't bring him back. This is my fault." In the bedroom, which contains four men sleeping on mattresses on the floor, Dimitri takes the empty place beside Matis, to comfort him. The mattress where Lukas used to whimper in the dark, until one of the men shouted, "Uzsičiaupk po velnių"--shut the f*** up. "Do you need something to sleep?" Dimitri asks. "That guy, the dealer who helped Saulius, he gave us pills." Matis shakes his head, rolls onto his back. "Sleep," Dimitri says. "We must work tomorrow." If life were a force of will, Matis could wish himself dead. No such luck. His body, tired and broken, keeps going. He keeps on waking on the stinking mattress, soaked in the sweat of other men who had been in the same situation before him. And what happened to them? When they are in the van at 4 a.m., it is a moment of reprieve--a moment to exhale. They have survived an ordeal, have dragged themselves from too little sleep, got to the BP garage, where migrants from across town are picked up for agricultural work, in time. They cannot be punished for missing the call, for being late. The next ordeal--catching enough chickens through the fog of their exhaustion, through the sting of the scratches on their hands reopening--would come later. Almost all the men fell straight to sleep in the van. Chin to chest. Forehead to window. He's always sleeping with this ragtag of psychos, the weird intimacy of sharing a room. The snoring, someone talking in his sleep, the smells emitted by bodies at night, thick and human and perhaps repulsive, but also deeply, vulnerably personal. Lukas may have whimpered on his mattress at night, but Matis didn't. This had been his idea, and he had had to make it work, had had to make it look like it was working. Up to now, he'd had to survive, even though he didn't want to, to tell both himself and Lukas that their bind was temporary, a bump on the path to freedom. But with Lukas gone . . . Day 1, 6:20 a.m. Manon *** "Wake me up now, Mummy!" Teddy yells from the next room. Manon gives Mark a shove and he rolls obediently out of bed. She squints at her watch. 6:20 a.m. "F***'s sake," she says, then turns over and descends back to delicious depths. The warmth of the duvet, the darkness of the room thanks to the blackout curtain lining, the numbness of her mind, broken by harsh winds of irritation: the feel of Mark and Teddy getting into the bed. She would make all manner of pacts with Lucifer to be allowed fresh descent. Give me five minutes, three minutes, one minute. I will give you my soul. There will be a moment of lovely cuddling, the velvety plush of Ted's cheek pads, his squidge-able limbs--forearms, upper arms, padded with gentle fat, still of a toddler. She cherishes this remnant of babyhood. She's become a baby botherer in cafés, overenunciating "Hallo!" into their cloudy eyes, while their mothers look on her with suspicion. Ted pushes his fingers up her nose and says, "Hello, Defective Mummy!" because he doesn't know the word is "detective." Or perhaps he does. She can feel the crescendo of fidgetry begin: knees in the groin, kissing that becomes biting, until one of them submits to predawn Weetabix. Standing over her boy, she holds his tiny penis away from his body so the yellow arc of piss, warm and high, hits the hedge. She's wondering whether to ring Mark to tell him to nudge Fly, make sure he isn't oversleeping. He's in an important moment at school (GCSEs) and she permanently feels he's too lackadaisical, but then she argues with herself about allowing him to grow up and make his own mistakes. So much of her internal monologue these days revolves around where she is going wrong as a parent. To micromanage or to let go, that is the question. The swings and slide were wet. Teddy went on them anyway. She was too comatose to object (should she start taking iron, for the tiredness?) despite knowing he would swing from happy and absorbed to freezing wet and miserable in a nanosecond. She looks up. The sky is an ominous thumb smudge, the light low and the air damp. Classic British spring. The chestnut tree twenty yards away billows in the wind, its candelabra flowers bobbing wildly. The air smells wet, fresh, with a trace of dog turd on its skirts. She sniffs again, sensing something. The wind is making things creak and knock. She can hear a sound that is wrong. Wrong place, wrong context. She scans about, while Teddy concentrates on weeing. There. In the billowing tree that is twenty yards away. She sees two black boots, high among the tree branches. She straightens, squinting to see better. Ankles, trousers. Swaying at head height. The creaking sound might be rope against branch. She tucks Teddy back into his trousers, swivels him by the shoulders, and lifts him. He is too big to be carried; they're always arguing about it, him standing in front of her--his block move--with arms in the air and her saying, "No, you can walk." So he's bewildered at being lifted, but is certainly not about to argue. He is a deadweight; damp trousers, his legs banging against her body. But she is in flight, not fight, holding his head down against her shoulder so he won't spot the legs, though it's unlikely he would notice. Her boy is a strange combination of beady-eyed and myopic. If she has her head in one of the kitchen cupboards, eating an illicit biscuit, he can fix her with a steely gaze. "What's that you got, Mummy?" "Nothing," she'll say, over the rubble of a full mouth. Yet she has a feeling if she were bleeding to death in the street, he'd stand over her, saying, "Need a drink. I'm urgent." She is running away from the tree, carrying Ted with one arm and digging into her pocket with the other for her phone to call it in. First time she's ever run away from a body. "Control, this is Officer Bradshaw, 564. We have a deceased in Hinchingbrooke Country Park close to the car park. Repeat cadaver unattended in country park. Urgent attendance needed, send units. Cadaver is unattended in a public place. In a tree. Hanging from a tree." "Can you attend please, Detective Inspector?" says the control room. "No, I am with a ch--a minor." Manon is trying to use language Teddy cannot understand. Deceased. Cadaver. Not dead. Not body. "I cannot attend. You need to send units." Despite her tone and use of jargon, Ted has sensed the rise in her vital signs, is prickling all over with transferred tension, and he lets out a wail--a combination of confusion and alarm. "All right, Ted," she says. "It's all right. Mummy's all right and you're all right. Just a work call, that's all. Shall we go home and watch Fireman Sam?" Excerpted from Remain Silent: A Manon Bradshaw Novel by Susie Steiner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.