When Skye married into the wealthy Campbell family, she thought she was entering paradise. But lately, she’s been unhappy in her marriage to Duncan and hiding a few secrets of her own as she tries to maintain a normal, happy life for their six-year-old daughter, Tilly.
Hard to avoid the feeling that SEE HOW THEY FALL is likely to be a standard domestic noir offering with tensions between a married couple that are eventually revealed. With the added level of it all occurring in one of those ridiculously wealthy, privileged families that have nothing better to do than tear each other apart at every given opportunity.
The setting is right there - the magnificent, over the top seaside estate, the obligatory bringing together of a range of warring siblings, the recent death of the family patriarch, Sir Campbell Turner, and the tensions of inheritance and control of the luxury goods empire that the family's wealth is built on. Add in a recently unknown son and heir, and some egos you can see from space, and of course it's going to get messy.
Only the sort of messy is unexpected - when poison kills one family member, and leaves another one, young and completely innocent of anything, fighting for her life. At that point it becomes less domestic noir and more domestic chaos as tensions within the family go through the ceiling and Sergeant Mei O'Connor is assigned to the case, right at the time that she's got her own personal challenges to be dealing with.
What we end up with in SEE HOW THEY FALL is a character study of two women really - Skye Campbell, from a poor background, married into wealth beyond your wildest dreams, is a case study in how money most definitely doesn't make you happy. Mei O'Connor on the other hand has a broken engagement, a terminally ill mother, and a life as a bit of outsider to deal with. Each woman, in their own way, is a walking disaster area, maybe two people who could be friends if one didn't have to discover if the other is party to a dreadful accident, or a murder plot so nasty, so evil, that the reader might just find themselves wondering about elites and just desserts.
Compulsive and compelling, this is, however, more than just a story of elites and the horrible things they still get away with. The two female perspectives at the core are really well counter-balanced, the dialogue believable, the message crystal clear, and the twist well executed.
See How They Fall
In this compulsive debut thriller set in Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs, one detective’s investigation into a family tragedy threatens to collapse a powerful dynasty. . . .
When Skye married into the wealthy Campbell family, she thought she was entering paradise. But lately, she’s been unhappy in her marriage to Duncan and hiding a few secrets of her own as she tries to maintain a normal, happy life for their six-year-old daughter, Tilly.
Now the family patriarch, Sir Campbell Turner, has died and his three sons are set to inherit the luxury goods empire upon which he built their fortune. But plans for a seamless handover are complicated when a fourth, hitherto unknown, heir named Cody comes forward. The Turners gather for an intimate weekend retreat at an opulent seaside estate in order to meet this newcomer and figure out their next steps. With so much at stake, tempers flare and egos clash within their first few hours together. But even as the tensions rise no one could predict that their very first night would end with a shocking poisoning that leaves one family member dead and another fighting for her life.
Sergeant Mei O’Connor is assigned to investigate the incident and though her superiors are keen to close the case as swiftly as possible, the evidence just isn’t lining up. Mei already has enough on her mind as she struggles to care for her terminally ill mother and recover from her broken engagement, but she can’t help poking around the Turners, convinced that there’s more to the suspicious poisoning than a simple accident. As Mei continues to push for answers, she may just send the carefully laid dominoes of the Turner empire crashing down.
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