Featured in the March issue of Yorkshire Life

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Product Description

Sally is watching the news with her husband when she hears a name she ought not to recognise: Mark Bretherick. Last year, a work trip Sally had planned was cancelled at the last minute. Desperate for a break from her busy life juggling work and a young family, Sally didn’t tell her husband that the trip had fallen through. Instead, she booked a week off work and treated herself to a secret holiday. All she wanted was a bit of peace – some time to herself – but it didn’t work out that way. Because Sally met a man – Mark Bretherick. All the details are the same: where he lives, his job, his wife Geraldine and daughter Lucy. Except that the man on the news is a man Sally has never seen before. And Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick are both dead . . .

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152106 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk
Sophie Hannah’s debut thriller novel, Little Face, immediately marked her out as a particularly penetrating and insightful practitioner of the psychological crime novel, with a skill for getting into the minds of her beleaguered characters, a skill she continued to polish in its successor, Hurting Distance. Her second book was a particular achievement, given that so many second novels fail to live up to the promise of their predecessors. And here is Sophie Hannah's third novel, The Point of Rescue, and it might be argued that it is her most accomplished book yet.

A woman is watching a report on television of the death of a mother and daughter; apparently both had died at the mother's hand. Also on the screen is the surviving member of the family, a widower described as Mark Bretherick. Watching with her husband, the woman, Sally, has to bite back the words that spring to her lips: this man is not Mark Bretherick! How does she know? Because she had enjoyed a brief sexual affair with the real possessor of that name some time before -- an affair (needless to say) she has not revealed to her husband. Sally is forced to hang on to her secret, and she anonymously informs the police that all is not as it appears to be in this case.

It is Sally's plight that so comprehensively engages the reader here, but readers of the earlier books by Sophie Hannah will be pleased to note the reappearance of her reliable copper Simon Waterhouse, who ensures that the sequences involving the investigation are quite as compelling as the those of a woman desperately trying to keep her indiscretion secret (while doing the right thing).

On the evidence of these three books, Sophie Hannah has a long career as a novelist ahead of her (perhaps to run in tandem with her alternative career as a poet). --Barry Forshaw

Review
'Sophie Hannah is adept at picking creepy scenarios that are guaranteed to terrify, with plot complications that keep you guessing until the last page. Hannah doesn't allow the tension to slacken for a second in this addictive, brilliantly chilling thriller.' (Marie Claire Book of the Month )

'Brilliantly creepy'

(Red Magazine )

'I'm surprised I had any nails left by the end of this addictive thriller.' (Eve )

'This disturbing tale is a cut above the average crime thriller, with an intelligent and inventive plot that raises questions about identity, guilt and the taboo of unfulfilling motherhood.' (Psychologies )

'A great read and an involving thriller' (She )

 Hannah's greatest strenth is the way she uses the conventions of the crime genre to produce novels that are indulgent pleasures, but with an extra edge.  The Point of Rescue isn't simply a woman-in-jeopardy yarn about an overworked mother whose dreams of escape turn into a nightmare that threatens to destroy her life (although it works brilliantly on this level), it is also about the thrill of transgression, and the dangers that lurk within the most appealing of fantasies.'

(Yorkshire Post )

About the Author
Sophie Hannah is a best-selling, award-winning poet. She regularly performs her poetry live to audiences nationwide and abroad, and recently won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her psychological suspense story The Octopus Nest. Little Face was a phenomenal word-of-mouth bestseller, and Hurting Distance, her second psychological crime novel has received brilliant critical acclaim. The Point of Rescue is her third novel.  Sophie lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two children.

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Customer Reviews

Brilliant suspense thriller that fires on all cylinders
What would you do if someone was trying to kill you, but you couldn't go to the police because that would mean revealing a secret that might destroy your family, the very same secret that might be about to get you killed? That is Sally Thorning's predicament in 'The Point of Rescue' - a superb thriller that is flawlessly written, deeply intelligent, pacy, gripping and totally unpredictable. In some ways this is a traditional detective story, for there are police characters working on unravelling the various mysteries and the irresistible sense of a puzzle needing to be solved is paramount, but this is also a hunted-woman thriller, also a very sophisticated pyschological suspense novel, and a book about relationships and a woman's role in society. I read oodles of thrillers, and it's very rare to find any that pay as much attention to depth and layers and psychology (proper characterisation, I suppose I mean)as to the logic-puzzle-style plot. This is not a 'locked-room' mystery, as there's no locked room, but it has that same sense of things which seem impossible but we know they can't be, because they've happened...how will it be resolved? Sophie Hannah pulls several twists out of the bag and the end, and a few moments of blood-curdling horror as the reader becomes aware of the depths of suffering involved. Loved it!

Mixed feelings
After an intriguing start, the tragi-comedy of working mother's Sally's chaotic life was entertaining and an interesting use of rueful humour to convey the conflicts involved in trying to juggle children and a career. There were some ingenious plot twists - I can't say which genuinely surprised me, without giving too much away. I agree that some of them were implausible.

On the other hand, as with many such books, which will obviously gain a wider readership and massive earnings, I have to ask why the clearly talented author did not spend just a little more time on ironing out the flaws.

The diary entries rapidly became tediously repetitive and almost caricatures of the situation, although you could argue that was intentional. A more serious weakness was the unconvincing love interest between the two police officers, and their odd, inadequately explained and developed psychology. All the other policemen seemed to be caricatures.There was a tendency for key "information giving" conversations to drag on for an implausibly long time given the circumstances e.g one party had to rush off to a meeting, or was driving at high speed on a hunch to save someone's life.

I was also too often aware of the same rather cynical, sarcastic voice coming through too many of the characters. I had no objection to the voice itself, just suspected it was the author's own voice, and felt it needed to be attached to one or two characters, not most of them. I was also unsure about the frequent digressions into amusing but trivial asides at dramatic moments - this with the generally rather shallow and manipulative relationships between key players made me care too little about any of them, and led me to leave the book and move on too lightly.

Promised more than the writer could deliver
This book began well and I did struggle to put it down. It seemed like a standard page turner murder mystery. However as the mystery was solved I felt cheated because I didn't think the plot hung together at all.

The final few chapters really let me down. It just isn't plausible that the police did not find out the identity of Encarna's husband until the end. How difficult would it have been to find out who owned the house? Wouldn't the school have mentioned who the father was, what he did? Especially when he had been on the school trip at the centre of the enquiries with the headteacher etc. If you can't accept that then a lot of the book becomes pointless.

In addition, the central plot thread - that Sally Thorning had had an affair with this man just didn't ring true and I found her character as a whole very unconvincing.

The final page or so when Charlie Nailer speaks to her boss about the diaries seems like a paltry attempt to tack social comment onto what was a very flimsy and poorly constructed story.