Product Description

Cass Bainbridge is being stalked ? New job, new home, new life ? Cass has moved to Brighton to start over as a lecturer at the university. But she?s already acquired some unwanted baggage. Someone?s watching her ? they?ve even taken photos. She?s being followed, too. And then there are the anonymous and threatening emails she?s receiving. With an unknown assailant attacking students on campus, Cass fears for her life. Is she to be the next random victim? Or is there a more sinister reason she?s been targeted?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131539 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-27
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Page-turning read
Another Katy Gardner success! I loved "Losing Gemma" and I love "The Mermaid's Purse" just as much. Cass is a sympathetic main character and held my attention all the way through the narrative. In fact I couldn't put it down. The various twists and turns of the plot are well-handled, as well as keeping you "on the edge of your seat", and the descriptive pieces very atmospheric. More please!

A great holiday read
While not as innovative a thriller as Gardner's first work, Losing Gemma, The Mermaid's Purse certainly made for an excellent holiday read. We're in typical thriller territory - stalkerville - and Gardner plays up to that in many ways with protagonist, English lecturer Cass Bainbridge, too close to the trees to see the wood. So as the suspense builds you're either willing Cass to wake-up or praying Gardner delivers a quick twist or two. In the end Gardner delivers most cleverly with a strategy calculated to subvert the genre and put us all back on our feet.

This is a novel about family and identity and, to my mind, how over dependent we can be on family when defining who we are. So, for me, the conclusions Cass came to were a little too convention and I'd have enjoyed her more if she'd gained a greater independence from her past.

Dreary
I enjoyed Losing Gemma but this novel was as dreary as a wet weekend in Brighton - I nodded off twice on the train while trying to read it, and was so bored by page 200 that I had to skim-read the end. I didn't miss much. The narrator is unlikeable, there's too much exposition, the prose is flat and the plot is stupid. Marketing it as a crime novel is, well, a crime, and calling it a thriller is an act of obscene false advertising. This novel would never have been published if Katy Gardner hadn't had a hit - deserved, admittedly - with her debut. I wouldn't normally write such a scathing review but I feel so annoyed that i couldn't help myself.