A Tidy Ending: The latest dark comedy from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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This isn’t a mystery per se, but there are several plot lines I couldn’t wait to see how they would play out. Who was the serial murderer? Why is Linda now in a mental ward? In Will Dean’s First Born, we meet Molly, an identical twin whose sister, Katie, has just been murdered in New York. Molly has always been the less adventurous of the two, cautious and frightened of life, but she forces herself to leave London to try to find out what really happened to her twin. As the New York police investigation seems to stall, Molly turns detective, leaving her comfort zone to interrogate Katie’s teachers, friends and boyfriends in her quest for the truth. An identical twin mystery is always entertaining and Dean, author of the excellent Tuva Moodyson series of Sweden-set thrillers and the standalone The Last Thing to Burn, handles his plot with skill. Molly, properly alone for the first time in her life, is a complex, intriguing protagonist – and Dean has plenty of surprises up his sleeve for the unwary reader. A highly entertaining thriller with a huge, warm, beating human heart and a central character that stays with you long, long after reading. I loved it.” — Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat Linda relates her story from within some sort of care facility, six weeks after everything happened, but it’s soon apparent that she’s an unreliable narrator. She presents as naïve, a bit simple, and is used to people underestimating her, doesn’t mind that, in fact. Those who are aware of her history might put it down to a traumatic childhood experience… As she opens more of Rebecca Finch’s mail, she seems to become fixated on her to the point of stalking. The story gets more complicated and far-fetched. By the end, I didn’t care what happened to anyone, I just wanted to know what the point was.

A Tidy Ending is Joanna Cannon’s third novel, after the bestselling The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, and her memoir about her time as a junior doctor, Breaking and Mending. It is a rare beast indeed: a genuinely funny, and moving, novel about a serial killer. We should never have left Wales… now we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of a Stephen King film,” Linda’s dreadful mother, Eunice, tells her. Linda is in her 40s, living with her dull husband, Terry, on an estate in the town of Hexford and working part-time in a charity shop, when the bodies of young women start turning up. The police are making investigations and launching appeals, but Linda and her neighbours in Cavendish Avenue know the killer must be someone close to home. And while they say there’s safety in numbers, Linda is wary, “because you can never quite be sure of who’s wandering around in those numbers with you”. MY THOUGHTS: Very clever, Joanna Cannon. I had absolutely no idea where you were taking me, not the slightest suspicion. My jaw hit the floor at the end and I laughed, probably a tad hysterically. It was just so beautifully unexpected.Discuss the presentation of social media in the book. How does it make the characters feel, and how does it impact the events of the story? How does this compare to your own experiences with social media? Linda is one of those characters that you can’t help cringing at whilst feeling some empathy. She’s lonely and would love a friend or two but she’s rather socially awkward and frequently misreads signals and body language and imagines every new acquaintance as a best friend and at times you worry that she’s being taken advantage of. The reader can see what is happening when others edge away and pretend to be busy but Linda appears oblivious, bless her. EXCERPT: There are no letterboxes to shout through here, of course. No garden wall to stand on and no doorbell to ring. All the tiny details, all the quiet, unnoticed edges of the world have been taken away, and it's only when they're gone you realise how much you depended on them to make sense of everything else. Linda orchestrated events and convinced Terry to buy the house by making him think it was his idea. I think she planned her revenge for a very long time.

What do we know about the character of Terry? How well does Linda really know him? Did you find him suspicious?

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Adapted from a short story and inspired by the voice of audiobook reader Lissa Berry, A Tidy Ending is a character driven cozy mystery with an edge that will have you questioning everything. Linda could easily be described as one of those women. She is married to Terry, and her life is now best described as one of routine and mundanity. While Terry goes out to work, Linda splits her time between looking after their house and working part time in a local charity shop. So far so unremarkable.

This is a story so cleverly constructed that even the most astute reader is unlikely to see the full picture before the jaw-dropping reveal. With red herrings, twists and distractions, and a chilling last line, Cannon’s latest novel is brilliantly plotted and deliciously dark. The only reason I’m not giving this book five stars is because number one, I feel like I just read another book about Molly, and number two, Linda is a really exaggerated character. When “The Maid” came out, Molly was so endearing. When I read “Tidy Endings”, I became annoyed with Linda because nobody is THAT clueless, not even Molly. It feels like Linda is Molly on overdrive, and it really wasn’t necessary.Sublimely structured and darkly witty...the multilayered plot offers genuine surprises up to the final revelation. Cannon has raised her game with this one." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) Most of the narrative is about her observations about the people in her neighborhood, social interactions with colleagues and neighbors, and dealing with her frustrating mother. Cannon’s shrewd characterisation, sparky observations and subtly menacing plot makes this a darkly funny and delightfully sinister read.’ – Mail on Sunday