Three Reasons for Revenge, Dervla McTiernan

Alexis Turner walks into a police station to report her assault by a psychologist - the same man that DS Judith Lee has taken a report about in the past. By the end of that same day Turner appears to have vanished, and Lee is dealing with the guilt that she feels over the poor advice she gave the first accuser 10 years ago. It's a job a bit outside Lee's normal remit, but nothing in Lee's life is exactly normal right now. She's also dealing with the fallout of her arrest of a fellow police officer, a nepo baby of the worst kind, a corrupt thug and a bully protected by his higher up father. Lee has some support in the service, albeit a lot of which stays very low under the radar, meanwhile her motorbike is vandalised in police parking and it seems that her career could very well be in jeopardy.

Soon after Turner vanished into thin air, beautifully wrapped packages, containing cryptic notes start showing up. At the psychologist's home, a socialite's mansion, and the run down apartment where a single father, Jack, lives with his young son after the suicide of his partner many years before, a complicated relationship, leaving him doing the very best he can to raise his son, without realising the full extent of her experience.

Until the psychologist is shot dead, the socialite and her young daughter die from poisoning and the young father is framed for their murders. It's an elaborate, and dangerous plot that's being executed by somebody who seems to be in the know, very well prepared and resourceful, especially as it looks like Lee is the only person who starts to see some connections, which have to be painstakingly pieced together by trawling backwards through old records, to find the source of the gun, and then a hint of a possible explanation or connection. Meanwhile the threat becomes very personal as Lee's past actions are pulled into what's a complicated and very chilling story.

Styled as a thriller, this is also a story of childhood trauma, and the way that society struggles to find a way to help those that have been severely damaged by the actions of others. It pulls Lee into that scenario whilst also revealing her own family backstory and a violent event in the past, that could very well be used against her by this determined and ruthless perpetrator. Each of the victims seems to have been punished, sexual misbehaviour revealed, betrayal uncovered, and ultimately, a young father manipulated into appearing for all the world to be the guilty party. 

There is a lot going on in THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE, and looking at it objectively, you'd think that it might be just a bit overwhelming, but the multiple stories are rolled out carefully, with the reader able to follow a complicated series of backgrounds, and the revelations without any heavy lifting on their part. Unlike the characters here, many of whom, not least Lee herself, are doing some very heavy lifting of their own, as the novel explores the way that childhood trauma informs current day actions - both positively and negatively - forming personality types that can go either way. The strength of this novel is not so much in the investigation, which is excellently portrayed, fast paced and cleverly constructed, but rather in the exploration of trauma and the reactions. Particularly the way that Judith and her, frankly unhinged mother, remember and react to the past that involved them both, reflected in the way that two sisters were affected by the actions of a violent, awful father, and the realisation of those outcomes on the people around them.

THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE is confronting reading, intense and powerful, it's a highly recommended revenge story that has some very battered edges to it.