The darkest secret A novel

Alex Marwood

eAudio - 2016

Real estate mogul Sean Jackson is throwing himself a splashy fiftieth birthday party, but trouble starts almost immediately: His ex-wife has sent his teenage daughters to the party without telling him; his current wife has fired the nanny; and he's finding it difficult to sneak away to his mistress. Then something truly terrible happens: one of his three-year-old twins goes missing. No trace of her is ever found. The attendees of the party, nicknamed the Jackson Associates by the press, become infamous overnight. Twelve years later, Sean is dead. The Jackson Associates assemble for the funeral, together for the first time since that fateful weekend. Soon the barbed comments and accusations are flying. By the end of the weekend, one wil...l be dead. And one of Sean's daughters will make a shocking discovery.

Saved in:
Subjects
Genres
Suspense fiction
Published
[United States] : Tantor Audio 2016.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Alex Marwood (author)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Other Authors
Beverly A. Crick (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (12hr., 41 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9781515926771
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

A HUGE WEIGHT of grief bears down like a marble tombstone On A GREAT RECKONING (Minotaur, $28.99), Louise Penny's disquieting mystery featuring Armand Gamache, the retired homicide chief of the Sûreté du Québec. Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, are wintering among their eccentric neighbors in the remote village of Three Pines when the first snowfall sends everyone scrambling for the warmth of the fireplace at the local bistro. As the village turns into a scene in a snow globe, the friends take to sorting through the desiccated newspapers, magazines and catalogs stuffed behind the bistro walls as insulation a century earlier ("as though words could keep winter at bay") and salvaged during a renovation. This powerful image opens into a narrative about the lost words and silenced voices of the village sons who marched off with handmade orienteering maps to guide their way back home, but never returned from the battlefields of Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele. Penny weaves their forgotten histories into her artful tale of a charismatic but despised instructor at the police academy who is found murdered in his quarters, perhaps at the hands of one of the cadets favored by Gamache, who, having cleansed the Sûreté of internal corruption, is now charged with sanitizing the academy Despite the theme of defiled innocence that makes this such a mournful story, the immense charm of the Gamache series survives in the magical setting and feisty residents of Three Pines, like the cranky old poet Ruth Zardo ("Bile. She's pure bile") and Clara Morrow, the dotty artist ("Have you ever seen a self-portrait where the person didn't look just a little insane?"). Neighbors open their homes to strangers, a litter of puppies is distributed throughout the village, and feasts great and small are cooked and shared. Like most of the yarns we've heard about Three Pines, this one honors the town elders and respects the rituals of their quiet existence. But in a broader sense, the novel reaches beyond the living to become the saddest kind of ghost story, a lament for all "the phantom life that might have been." MILLY JACKSON, THE central character in Alex Marwood's cruel and cunning mystery THE DARKEST SECRET (Penguin, paper, $16), is in her glory when she's among friends at a bar playing "Spot the Personality Disorder." In fact, she's so good at this game that she's the only one in her trust-fund tribe who's capable of identifying the true psychopaths among them. (Hint: When serious trouble goes down, "they'll be the only people still smiling.") Milly wasn't always such a brittle cynic; she once enjoyed her status as an older, possibly even beloved daughter of Sean Jackson, a wealthy real estate developer and a textbook example of galloping narcissism. But that was before Milly's 3-year-old half sister, Coco, disappeared from the family's weekend home, causing her father's extended harem of current and former wives and their multiple offspring to come tumbling down in a wretched heap. Years on, when Sean himself dies, Milly joins Coco's surviving twin and a crowd of relatives and hangers-on for a macabre funeral at the monstrous pile Sean chose to call Blackheath House. It's the perfect occasion for Marwood to use as the plot-twisting, mind-altering and monstrously funny final chapter in the life of a man who clearly didn't know as much about women as he thought he did. NOBODY WRITES LIKE Ken Bruen, with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows, THE EMERALD LIE (Mysterious Press, $25) is pure Bruen, with its verbal tics, weird typography and unorthodox wordplay Not to mention the odd bits of logic ("Never judge a dog's pedigree by the kind of books he does not chew") and choice quotations from the literary likes of Tennessee Williams ("If I got rid of my demons, I'd lose my angels"). Although Jack Taylor, Bruen's frequently drunk, violent and maudlin detective hero, is still the main draw, he's rivaled by a serial killer who works himself into a murderous rage over improper grammatical usage. ANNE PERRY'S FANS have been following the adventures of her Victorian police detective, Thomas Pitt, and his socially connected wife, Charlotte, right up to the dawn of the new century. But the year is only 1869 in REVENGE IN A COLD RIVER (Ballantine, $28), Perry's latest novel in a grittier series featuring Cmdr. William Monk of the Thames River Police, a troubled man with a past so murky he can't even remember it. Like the great Dickens novel "Our Mutual Friend," the Monk series has a deep, almost primal bond with London's great river, which disgorges all sorts of objects, including human bodies, with each tide. The fresh corpse lying at Monk's feet at the beginning of this uncommonly atmospheric mystery was a master forger, and behind the murder of this "nasty piece of work" lies a clue to the puzzle of Monk's troublesome memory gaps. The storytelling is dazzling, as it always is in a Perry novel; but because the amnesiac hero stands accused of a string of murders he may very well have committed, back in a time he can't recall, the resolution is less an intellectual exercise than a matter of life and death.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review

The abduction of three-year-old Coco Jackson haunts everyone who was at her father Sean's fiftieth birthday party the weekend she disappeared. Twelve years later, Sean's death brings all the players back together. Coco's twin has grown up in a remote village, fiercely protected by her mother. She's escorted to the funeral by Camilla, a daughter from a previous marriage who has been out of touch with her father and his other children for years. Chapters leading up to the funeral alternate with details about the weekend Coco disappeared. As the book progresses, it becomes chillingly clear to the reader that at least one person at that party knows more than what they're saying. The reader's heart sinks and pulse races as the author (The Wicked Girls, 2015) teases out the true story. Marwood is emerging as a first-rate teller of twisted tales and don't let it be so suspense. Think Minette Walters and Barbara Vine with a little Gillian Flynn thrown in.--Keefe, Karen Copyright 2016 Booklist

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

In Edgar-winner Marwood's compulsively readable if not wholly satisfying psychological thriller, real estate magnate Sean Jackson throws himself an elaborate 50th birthday bash in the posh British seaside town of Bournemouth one summer weekend in 2004. When Sean's touchy second wife, Claire, fires the nanny before the weekend, the couple take charge of their three-year-old twins, Coco and Ruby. Then Coco disappears overnight from the room she shares with Ruby at the Jackson holiday home and is never seen again. Twelve years later, Sean is dead of a heart attack, discovered handcuffed to a bed with a woman who isn't his fourth wife. Mila, one of Sean's daughters by his first marriage, reluctantly identifies the body and later agrees to accompany Ruby to Sean's funeral. The toxic Jackson family air soon envelops the half-sisters amid the lingering questions surrounding Coco's disappearance. Marwood (The Killer Next Door) shifts time periods effortlessly and creates a noxious cast of characters, but keen readers may predict the final twist. Five-city author tour. Agent: Laetitia Rutherford, Watson, Little (U.K.). (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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

In 2004, three-year-old Coco Jackson was abducted from her father Sean's 50th birthday party. Despite a nationwide manhunt, she was never found, and the wealthy and influential guests at that ill-fated weekend, dubbed the Jackson Associates, are haunted by the event. Twelve years later, Sean dies under less-than-honorable circumstances. Estranged daughter Camilla, herself a brief guest at the party, is not only left to identify the body but also gets roped into taking her half-sister Ruby, Coco's twin, to the funeral. When they arrive at her father's home, they are met by the remaining members of the Jackson Associates, as well as Sean's fourth wife, a woman Camilla's age who has had an unhealthy obsession with Sean since girlhood. As the funeral weekend unfolds, threats are made, secrets are whispered, relationships are strained, and the truth about Coco's disappearance may finally be uncovered. Marwood (The Wicked Girls) weaves these two weekends together with a deft hand, creating a story filled with suspense and crafty misdirection. Verdict If Liane Moriarty and Gillian Flynn got their characters together for a drug- and alcohol-fueled two days, Marwood's latest thriller might well be the result. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]-Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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