Betrayal

There are no punishments and no rewards, there are only consequences. – Karin Alvtegen

Karin Alvtegen is described rather blandly in Wikipedia as a “crime writer” whose “psychological thrillers are generally set in Sweden.” It’s not an entirely inaccurate description but it also does her a disservice. I think we have a much better writer here than just a crime writer. Of course there are good and bad writers engaged at every level but as I worked my way through this novel I found two names creeping into my thoughts, neither of whom would readily jump to your mind when discussing crime fiction: Harold Pinter and John Fowles, two literary giants in their own chosen fields. And the two works that came to mind were, obviously, Pinter’s play, Betrayal, and Fowles’ first novel, The Collector.

Betrayal is not the first novel by Alvtegen that I’ve been exposed to. Of the five currently available in English I’ve read and reviewed Shadow and Missing in that order – I’ve yet to tackle Guilt and Shame – and I gave them perfectly respectable reviews but I wasn’t especially hankering to read another so much so that when my little collection of review copies started to mount up I considered passing on it and moving onto weightier stuff but I’m rather glad I didn’t now because this was a different beast entirely.

For starters the ‘crime’ under the microscope here is not murder and it is rare and refreshing for a crime novelist to look at some of the other crimes if betrayal can even be classified as a full-bodied crime; certainly most European countries have decriminalised adultery. That doesn’t mean this book is without any felony – there are several including assault, invasion of privacy, defamation, illegal entry – but the word ‘crime’ itself only appears three times and even there it’s talking about how betrayal is not a crime. Betrayal was nominated for the Glass Key Award for the best Nordic crime novel in 2004 and has since become a bestseller across Europe but what this book does to good effect is use the format of the crime novel to attempt to dissect the nature of betrayal. The Collector would not be considered a crime novel but it most certainly is and if this book were marketed differently it could slip onto the contemporary fiction shelves and hold its own, but I doubt it would have been read by a fraction of the people who have read it otherwise.

Let’s look at our suspects and victims, the betrayers and the betrayed, if, indeed, they can be separated so easily.

There are two strands to this book that gradually become intertwined: in the opening two chapters we are introduced to Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrick, a stay-at-home writer; they have been married for fifteen years, live in a nice house in Stockholm and have a six-year old son, Axel. The next chapter we get to meet Jonas, a twenty-five-year-old postman, who is sitting in a private room in a hospital where his girlfriend, Anna, has been lying in a coma for two years and five months following a mysterious swimming accident. None of the couples have ever met and know nothing about each other’s existences. Things are not going well with the married couple. Jonas, on the other hand, is devoted to Anna – he even obtains permission to spend one night a week with her – but she’s not recovering and it looks like it will only be a matter of time before he loses her completely.

It’s not hard to work out the first betrayal. It’s the classic one: husband looks for a bit on the side because his wife isn’t fun anymore. Even before Eva corroborates what she suspects, it’s obvious. Eva, predictably, never sees it coming. She’s too preoccupied with her own job, running the house and taking care of their boy with super efficiency:

Always so fast. Everything finished and ready before he even managed to see that it needed to be done. Always ready to solve every problem, even those that were none of her concern, before he even had a chance to think about it. Like an impatient steam locomotive she charged ahead, trying to make everything right. But it was not possible to fix everything. The more he tried to demonstrate how distant he felt, the more zealously she made sure it wouldn’t be noticed. And with each day that passed he had grown more conscious that it really didn’t matter what he did. She didn’t need him anymore.

Maybe she never had.

He was merely something that had been hooked onto the locomotive for the journey.

Half of Henrick’s life has gone – pfft! – and the final leg is not shaping up the way he might have hoped. He’s not simply being a doom monger though. His fears are grounded in the real world. He looks at his parents’ marriage and shudders:

They sat there in Katrineholm in their house that was all paid off. Everything finished and settled. One evening after another, side by side in their two well-used TV recliners. All conversation had long since stopped. All consideration, all expectation, all respect, everything had slowly but surely died a natural death years ago from lack of nourishment. They only thing that was left was a mutual reproach for all they had missed, all that had been lost to them.

When he thinks about them he never uses the word ‘betrayal’ but he’s thinking it and the noteworthy thing is that they have both let down the other. No doubt they made plans when they were younger, talked about taking trips – Katrineholm is at the junction of two major rail routes (so easy just to jump on a train) – or they might have bought a summer cabin and yet they can’t even be bothered to get in their car and drive the hundred kilometres to Stockholm (about 62 miles) to visit their grandson on his birthday. That is the future Henrick sees for him and his wife.

When pressed by his wife he admits to having felt this way for about a year, not that he’s especially forthcoming, and the only explanation he can give for his cooling off towards her is:

We don’t have fun anymore.

Eva’s life is not exactly fun either but she has plans of her own to worry about:

What telephone plan to sign up with, which electrical company would be more advantageous, where to invest the pension money, which school was the best, which family doctor, the lowest interest on the mortgage. And they all affected her little world: what was best and most beneficial for her and her family. Endless decisions to make, and you still never knew if you had made the right ones.

One thing she is not thinking about is having an affair, but the neither is Jonas. Jonas is also not having fun. He also had expectations, had made plans. Now he only has wants:

He wanted only one thing.

Only one.

That she would wake up and touch him. Take hold of him. And afterwards she would hold him tight and tell him that he never had to be alone again. That he didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

He would never leave her.

Never.

Jonas is an odd one. Anna had been good for him though, she calmed him (even in her comatose state she still has a calming effect on him), but, following the accident, “it started again.”

It came sneaking up, lying in wait for him, at first only as a diffuse need to create symmetry and restore balance. And later, when the gravity of her injuries had become more and more obvious, the pressure to perform the complicated rituals had intensified to an inescapable compulsion. The only way to neutralise the threat was to give in. If he didn’t obey the impulses properly, something horrible would happen. What, he didn’t know, only that the fear and pain grew intolerable if he tried to fight back.

Jonas has Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). The concept of neutralisation is a common one with sufferers although it takes many forms. They may, for instance, respond by thinking “good thoughts”, asking for reassurance from others or washing their hands:

When the neutralising strategy reduces the anxiety level of the individual it is reinforcing: it is more likely to be repeated in the future. The act is repeated so often that it becomes an obsession or compulsion. When the neutralising strategy seems effective it confirms the idea that the intrusive thought was dangerous or morally reprehensible and in need of elimination. This is the behavioural aspect of the disorder. – Keiron Walsh, ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’, A-Level Psychology

Jonas is a hand washer but he also believes that touching things again can neutralise things:

He looked at the door handle that he had just touched. Damn it. He touched it again to neutralise it, but that didn’t help.

Jonas is also a betrayer. He was not unfaithful to Anna, no, he betrayed his mother. He was thirteen years when it started:

Just tell her I have to work late tonight. Damn it, Jonas, you know that this woman . . . well, shit, she gives a hell of a good ride.

Thirteen years old and his father’s loyal conspirator. The truth, whatever and wherever it was, had to be kept secret from his mother at all costs.

To protect her.

Year in and year out.

In time, as is always the case, the mother finds out and she rightly recognises that her husband is not alone is his duplicity. She never speaks to her son from that day on until his eighteenth birthday:

Nine words his mother had said to him after the betrayal was revealed. Nine words.

[…]

I don’t want you to live here anymore.

We don’t learn much about Anna. She’s older than Jonas, twelve years older, an artist who had a studio in the same building where Jonas lived after leaving home. Her parents died in a car crash when she was fourteen. She and Jonas were only together for a year before the accident, on the very day he worked up the courage to propose to her, and he’s never left her since. He’s supported the nursing staff by massaging her legs and doing all sorts of minor tasks in his own OCD way trying to neutralise what has happened to her, “[t]rying to make everything all right.” Just for the record Anna is also a betrayer but we don’t learn in what way for quite a while so just hold that thought. Of course if Jonas is trying to make it all right does that mean he was in some way responsible? Is it guilt that’s keeping him here rather than love? Nothing is ever that simple. How many of us feel our emotions one at a time?

What is the proper response to betrayal? Or even the natural response? Jonas’ mother shuns her son but, for many, there will be the often kneejerk response to pay the person back: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and infidelity for infidelity. So they go out and screw the guy’s best friend or the first person they meet in a bar. And that’s what happens here. Not the best friend, the bar. When Eva finds out exactly what (or, to be more precise, who) her husband has been doing she goes out, picks up a guy in a bar, goes back to his flat and lets him have his way with her.

And that is how the two storylines come together because the guy just happens to be Jonas. Yes, Jonas, loyal Jonas, who has sat beside his ailing girlfriend for two years and five months. So, what the hell is Jonas doing in a bar? The same reason: he’s been betrayed:

For the first time in two years and five months he was going to spend the evening somewhere else besides Karolinska Hospital. His anger at Anna’s betrayal would not let him go, and by God he would show her. She could lie there all alone and wonder where he was. Tomorrow he would tell her that he had been at the pub having a good time. Then she’d regret it, realise that she could actually lose him.

Okay, okay, okay. So, has she woken up and told him she was unfaithful? No. Has he encountered someone from her past who has knowledge of some dalliance? No, not that either. Nothing has changed apart from a meeting with the psychologist:

I’m here to help you, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Anna is dying and you must accept that. And you must accept that it’s not your fault, that you did the best you could. No one can ask any more of a person.

For some reason this sends Jonas over the edge. He becomes furious with the psychologist. She assumes it is because he refuses to accept the inevitable but that’s not it:

Something burst inside him. He turned his head and looked at Anna.

She betrayed him. She lay there so innocent in her unconsciousness, but she had apparently not forgotten how to betray him. Once again she intended to leave him, alone. After all he had done for her.

Damn it.

He couldn’t trust her even now. Even now she wouldn’t do as he wished.

Things could have gone worse than they do. At least Eva has the sense to give a false name and so when Jonas wakes up in the morning all he knows is that he has slept with a woman called ‘Linda’ and nothing more. And, in the real world, that’s probably where the two strands would have headed off in their own directions and never met again. But that’s not what happens here.

Now anyone who has read a goodly number of Ruth Rendells will not be overly surprised by how the plot pans out and the last two-thirds of the book don’t hold any tremendous surprises but what kept my interest is that none of the protagonists are any less than fully-fledged characters, not a fleck of cardboard anywhere in sight. Everyone behaves in a believable way based on what they know or – more importantly – what they surmise: not all clues lead to the evidence one might expect. Betrayals of all kinds are explored, both real and imaginary and don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s Jonas that gets it wrong; that would be too easy – yes, blame the crazy guy – because they’re all inside emotional straightjackets. Let me illustrate:

Jonas likes to count things – pages, steps, distances – but there is an instance where all three main players make the same observation. With Jonas, it’s nine words (“I don’t want you to live here anymore”), Eva, three (“I don’t know”) and Henrick, four (“What do you want?”). I’m a little OCD – how many times have you heard someone say that? Well, all of these are. Did you notice the use of the word ‘anymore’ in the quotes by the way? Another way in which the characters are linked. And here’s another way: there are three chapters in the book where we get to see the events in the previous chapter through the eyes of the other party involved. Chapter one is from Eva’s perspective and in the second chapter we get to see the whole scene from her husband’s perspective. I’ve only seen this done once before and that was in John Fowles’ first novel, The Collector, where the first half of the book tells the story from the man’s point of view and then we get the whole thing again from the woman’s, the only difference is that there’s then a wee coda and we find out what happens.

Technique is something that I would usually point the finger at. If I’ve noticed it then it’s been done in a ham-fisted way. American crime shows where everything needs to get wrapped up neatly in 43 minutes are a perfect example; if someone coughs you know it’s a clue. That’s an example of plot done badly. An example of plot done well is the Pinter play which, if you haven’t seen it, runs backwards, beginning at the end of an affair and showing scenes from the relationship going back to the first meeting. Impossible to disguise so why try? And that’s what I liked about this book: she doesn’t hide her technique but because it’s unusual and atypical; it makes us think about why she’s chosen this particular approach.

I was also pleased (although ‘pleased’ is probably not the right word) to see that this book is, as I suspected, a personal insight into the nature of betrayal but then I imagine there are few of us who have not let down someone in the past or been disappointed ourselves. On her website Alvtegen writes:

In Sweden, a lot of marriages in my generation nowadays end with a divorce. I started to wonder about why so many of these divorces become so destructive. People I know and always looked upon as sensible and wise, who lived together for many years and have children together, suddenly started to behave like maniacs. As if they were each other’s worst enemies.

Inside our human brains we have something called the Limbic system. It is one of the oldest parts of our brain and it controls all our primary needs and we share it with the rest of the mammals on earth. But the human brain continued to evolve, and the evolution gifted us with an unique intelligence that expected us to separate from the rest of the animals. But in critical situations, when we get scared or feeling threatened, the Limbic system takes over and in an attempt to defend ourselves we react and behave exactly as the animals we once were. I am convinced that frightened people (just like animals) can be very dangerous.

Maybe our biggest fear of all is being abandoned and rejected. And if you add that fear with the threat of losing your entire existence, everything that you are used to, I venture to say that most people become very scared.

Five years ago I went through a divorce myself. Although "Betrayal" is not a personal documentary I did use my own experiences of the emotional turbulence I went through. The paradoxical benefit of a personal disaster of that magnitude is that it helped me discover some of my innermost fears. Without that experience I could not have written Betrayal.

The book is not perfect – and I’m not talking here about whether it’s a perfect thriller or whatever – for example, I was appalled at the ease one of the characters obtains information from a government source – no it’s not Jonas looking for ‘Linda’ – because I’ve worked in the civil service and we told no one anything. In Sweden though there is something called the Principle of Public Access which was the first ever piece of freedom of information legislation in the modern sense; it dates back to 1766 and that’s not a typo. Just what that allows individuals to obtain over the counter I have no idea but no one likes it when a detective in a novel has the answers handed to him on a plate. One of the reviewers on Goodreads said that he spotted “one or two unfortunate clichés along the way” and, if by that he meant that some of the characters behaved in predictable ways then I don’t see that so much as a fault as her being accurate; I don’t think that people do react to betrayal in more than a handful of ways.

Probably the main ‘problem’ most people will have with the book is that you know it’s not going to have a happy ending. There are several ways she could have gone badly at the end and all of them would have worked. What she opted for is probably one of the less believable ones but as an exploration of the nature of betrayal I think it was a fitting ending, maybe even a little Chekhovian. In fact if the whole book was set in period costume it would work, if you could figure a way around the need for e-mails, but it’s perfectly doable.

This is an intelligent, well-written novel by anyone’s standards. The American production company, Glasshouse Pictures, has acquired the film rights to Betrayal. I have no doubt they will be able to turn it into an engrossing and entertaining screenplay but I suspect what will be lost in the translation is the degree of insight into the characters which, even though she uses the third person throughout, Alvtegen still manages to convey.

You can preview the book here.

***

Karin Alvtegen-Lundberg was born on June 8th, 1965 in Huskvarna, Sweden. In addition to writing novels – Missing is her fifth – she has also worked as a writer for television having written episodes of the Swedish soap operas Rederiet and Tre kronor. She also wrote the film script to the 2004 film Hotet and has worked in the art department on several other films. Translation rights have been sold to 30 countries and each novel has sold several hundred thousands of copies.

Alvtegen has received a number of literary awards, including The Glass Key for Best Nordic Crime Novel, the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award, the Danish Academy of Crime Writer's Palle Rosenkrantz Award for Best Foreign Crime Novel of the Year. She has also been nominated for two of the most prestigious crime novel's awards in the world: The CWA International Dagger, for Shadow, and The Edgar Allan Poe Award, for Missing.

She is grandniece of the children's novelist Astrid Lindgren, best remembered for writing the Pippi Longstocking books.

The Sacrificial Man

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide – Albert Camus

A year ago I reviewed Ruth Dugdall’s novel The Woman Before Me. It has the feel and shape of a crime novel but the twist is that we already know who the guilty party is; they’ve been apprehended, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and are now up for parole. What the book does is follow the probation officer, Cate Austin, as she tries to come up with a recommendation to put before the parole board. There is a catch. The sole criterion for eligibility for parole is remorse and the prisoner in question, a woman called Rose Wilks, who has been charged with the accidental murder of a child, has always – and continues to – maintained her innocence. How can one express genuine remorse for something you say you never did? As it transpires, she is innocent of the crime for which she had been convicted, but everyone is guilty of something. Now, that might seem like a lot to tell you about Ruth’s first ‘Cate Austin’ novel but I have my reasons. If you have the time and the inclination you can read the whole review here.

I was very taken with The Woman Before Me. It has its weaknesses and I’m not going to ignore them but I loved the premise and frankly expected to be disappointed by her next novel which I imagined would fall back on a more traditional style. I thought this approach would work for one novel but that would be it. I’m pleased to say I’ve been proved wrong. The question is: Has she fallen foul to the law of diminishing returns? You know what I’m on about: you’re hungry and someone hands you a ham and mustard sandwich and it’s the very best ham and mustard sandwich that you have ever had in your puff and it’s so damn good that you want to eat it all over again, whereupon your kindly host hands you another, identical sarnie but it never is the same, is it? Whereas the first one was great, this second one is only very good at best.

The Sacrificial Man, much to my surprise, has exactly the same structure as The Woman Before Me. It’s as if Ruth has rubbed out all the characters in the first book bar Cate and filled in new ones. The ‘Rose’ character is now Alice, a university lecturer (Exeter College, English Literature). The crime is not murder, it’s assisted suicide, a crime that can attract up to fourteen years in prison so it’s not that it’s not serious, it is. The premise is the same and the approach the same – Alice gets to narrate her story and Cate’s side of things is told in the third person – and again the question is: what is, in this case Alice, guilty of? She’s been charged, tried, found guilty but not sentenced. This is where Cate Austin comes in. It is her job to make a recommendation to the court.

That surprised me. I thought that the judge would have simply decided that there and then. In an article in the East Anglian Daily Times, Ruth, who used to work as a probation officer herself, had this to say about the job:

I loved being a probation officer. They get a really bad press, but I think they do a great job. People generally have the totally wrong idea about what they do. They think they're there to befriend offenders and give them cups of tea and sympathy; actually, it's all about challenging them and getting them to accept what they've done and think about the victim.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report, Ruth Dugdall has got better at making ‘sarnies’. The approach may be identical but her writing has improved. It is still not a perfect novel and the main weakness in the first book for me is actually amplified by the fact that her new antagonist is a much bigger character this time. In The Woman Before Me, Rose doesn’t exactly jump off the page but Alice does. Do you recall Tim Burton’s Batman, the one featuring Jack Nicholson as the Joker? I remember at the time some criticism was levelled, quite rightly, at the film because Nicholson dominated the film. Some critics even went as far as to say the film should have been called The Joker there was so little of Batman in it. If this book had been called Cate Austin I might have said the same.

Alice Mariani suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a condition in which people have an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with themselves. Dr Gregg, the psychologist assigned to assess her, asked Cate Austin:

“Have you heard of egomania?”

“Well, yes,” she replied cautiously, “but I didn’t think it was a medical term.”

“It isn’t. It’s the nineteenth century word for a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but I think it sums things up nicely. I think Alice is a classic case. There are nine key features to the disorder, and my initial assessment is that she scores high on most of them. She’s preoccupied with power, arrogant and has a feeling of entitlement to act as she feels fit. Another feature is a lack of empathy.”

On top of this she is very beautiful. And knows it. She is poised, articulate, and comes across as very sure of herself. She drives an MG Midget (Cate, “a run-around in dull green with a dent in the wing.”) This is her book and don’t you forget it: she’s talking to you:

I’ve chosen you. You will listen. You are my judge, the true arbiter.

Those words aren’t addressed to Cate or Smith or any other character in the book. Alice kicks down the fourth wall and makes sure you’re paying attention.

(For the record, by the way, the most likely diagnosis for the Joker, although definitely a narcissist, is probably antisocial personal disorder.)

So, what is her story all about? Alice has responded to an online advert:

Man seeks beautiful woman for the journey of a lifetime. I will lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. Will you help me to die?

The quote is from Psalms 121:

1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help.

2. My help cometh from the LORD,
which made heaven and earth.

If you read the entire psalm is has a similar feel to Psalm 23, the LORD is my shepherd. The appeal is from a guy who uses the Internet name, Smith – his real name is David Jenkins – Alice going by the name Robin, names which they mostly continue to use in the real world once they finally meet. Smith is not a crank, at least he doesn’t appear to be, he says he’s not terminally ill and despite quoting the Bible he doesn’t come across as a religious nut either. His online profile reveals little though:

He’d been a fan of Morrissey in his teens and I imagined a melancholic youth with floppy hair smoking dope. He said he was a Catholic and, however lapsed, the faith was in his blood.

It’s the name that first attracts Alice:

To me, Smith was beautifully anonymous – an Everyman. I didn’t want the unique or standalone; I sought the mediocre, the average, the one lost in a crowd. I wanted the man who worked behind a desk, who microwaved cardboard meals, who rubbed the sore grooves down his nose, scored by his glasses, Mr Mousy Hair, Mr Nylon Shirts. Strange, that I sought the ordinary when I’m anything but.

Others respond to his ad, but Robin/Alice is his choice.

Her assessment of Smith is right on the nail. He works as an actuary for an insurance firm in London. He’s twenty-seven, a popular age to die, although John Keats, whose poetry and philosophy of life features, was only twenty-five. In chapter ten Cate gets to see Alice deliver a lecture on Keats, albeit one on film as she has been suspended from actual teaching duties. The talk ends with…

As Keats said, ‘I conclude,’ projecting to the camera, ‘now more than ever seems rich to die. To cease upon the midnight with no pain. A perfect death is a way to cheat the dulling, dumbing effect of time. To die at the heart of love is the only way to preserve its purity.’

Alice, predictably, enjoys watching herself onscreen:

My onscreen image is beautiful, slim, clever. To Cate Austin, as to the students sitting enthralled, it must appear as if I have it all.

So why would this clearly intelligent woman who has “it all” agree to help a complete stranger end his own life? She’s not a member of The Hemlock Society, although this pro-suicide organisation does take an interest in her case, in fact she doesn’t appear to have any strong feelings on the subject that don’t come out of a book and like many academics when asked a question she’s prone to respond with a quote. Or is that just a front? At her core she comes across as a Romantic. Even when she thinks about the very real possibility of a custodial sentence, this is what she comes up with:

The word is too romantic, a beautiful lie. ‘Prise’, a word for open. Said quickly prison could be present – birthdays and Christmas. How can such a word mean something so ugly, so absolute, as incarceration? I shall say jail. The word is more honest, in it you can hear the clink of keys in locks. I like to be honest with words…

David Jenkins – Smith – on the other hand is very different but one can also see why, once she got to know him, there might have been some attraction. He’s a decent bloke, organised – his suicide note is written months in advance and goes to great pains to ensure that Robin, as he calls Alice, is protected from prosecution. He writes:

Robin is no more responsible for my death than a train driver who runs over a guy who jumped on the tracks. She may be driving the train but she never made me jump. It will be me swallowing the drugs, knowing they bring death. The eating, too, is my request. Robin doesn’t even really want to – she’ll be doing it for me. And I’ll be alive at that point, so it’s not even illegal.

Right. I probably should have mentioned the eating bit. But I won’t, if you don’t mind, mention that bit. Yeah, I know, that puts a whole different complexion on everything. Especially since Alice is vegetarian. Is this all starting to ring bells now? Let me remind you:

Recently [in 2002], a man in Germany was put on trial for killing and consuming another German man. Disgust at this incident was exacerbated when the accused explained that he had placed an advertisement on the internet for someone to be slaughtered and eaten—and that his ‘victim’ had answered this advertisement. The man had first castrated his willing victim, and then the two had eaten the removed flesh. Following this, Armin Meiwes administered a drug, stabbed Bernd-Jurgen Brandes to death, cut him into pieces, and placed him in the freezer—a delicacy to be consumed over several months. – J. Jeremy Wisnewski, ‘Murder, Cannibalism, and Indirect Suicide: A Philosophical Study of a Recent Case’, Philosophy in the Contemporary World 14:1 (Spring 2007)

The man in question was Armin Meiwes who was arrested in December of 2002 and, indeed, it was hearing about the case on the news that first sowed the seeds in Ruth Dugdall’s mind. Meiwes was put on trial in 2003, and convicted of manslaughter in January, 2004. He was sentenced to 8½ years. Of course Ruth references it in the book along with other similar cases; she’s obviously done her research. There are clear differences, however, between the circumstances surrounding David Jenkins’ death and what happened in Germany but, needless to say, the press, ever keen to sensationalise things, focuses on the act of cannibalism, something Alice thinks little of:

It was like eating the dead skin from a scab. It was nothing. It was rubber and salt.

As with The Woman Before Me the facts in this case appear clear cut. No one is accusing Alice of misrepresenting the facts or of trying to wriggle out of anything. But what we believe to be true isn’t always what turns out to be true. And that is what Cate Austin, as she carries out her investigation, uncovers.

Like all novels of this ilk the suspense is derived from eking out information. As it happens the day of his suicide Smith posts a letter to one of his workmates, Krishna Dasi, that proves to be the sole piece of evidence that is needed to clarify what really happened and who is guilty of what and if Krishna hadn’t hung onto it for weeks before deciding to hand it over and, if, when he did choose to hand it over, he had picked a police officer rather than Cate Austin, or if Cate had been a faster reader than she apparently is (taking another 113 pages to get through something she could and should have read in an hour), then everything would have been done and dusted by page 163 or thereabouts. I’m being picky. It’s not as if her being a slow reader gets someone else killed. It just means that it takes a bit longer for everyone to find out the truths and how they change their lives.

There is another layer to this book. We have Alice talking straight to us, we have Cate’s story and then we have a third story, the backstory where we learn where Alice came from and what happened to make her the person she has turned into. Really, the fact that she willingly agreed to be a party to someone’s suicide is one of the least interesting things about her once you learn about her mother and what happened to the two of them, how Alice ended up in care and also how Alice ended up rich: by the end of the book she’s been transformed from merely the accused into a real person. Smith, not so much, although we do learn a lot more about him, but this is Alice’s story.

As with The Woman Before Me, Cate is the weak link. This is what I had to say about her last appearance:

I found Cate the most predictable character here. It’s a common ploy of crime novelists to have a fair degree of overlap between protagonist and antagonist and I never truly engaged with her. She does her job, metaphorically and literally.

and I feel exactly the same about her in this book. I know that Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple’s talent as a detective lies in the fact she is unobtrusive, blending into the background where she can conveniently overhear relevant snippets of conversations but she still has character; in the early novels she’s a gleeful gossip and not an especially nice woman before Christie softened her down and made her more “fluffy”. In an e-mail Ruth said this to me:

The question of whether Cate should be more to the fore was one I struggled with, and in earlier drafts she is much more present. I removed these sections as I felt Alice – and Smith – had such strong storylines and I was worried about distracting the reader. Maybe I was too heavy handed with my removals?

It’s a difficult call. But my main feeling about Cate in this book is the fact that she does precious little detecting. Yes, she notices that Alice swapped vases – that was well spotted – but she failed to notice how ill Alice was until it was pointed out to her and Krishna simply hands her the vital piece of evidence; no one knows it exists before then. To be fair it’s more realistic this way – my wife and I are always tearing apart cop shows on TV apart for the remarkable leaps in deduction they make and don’t get either of us started on forensic evidence – but it does make her a bit dull; a necessary player but not a very exciting one. But then she doesn’t need to be; we have Alice.

Bottom line? I enjoyed this. It asks some serious philosophical questions in the midst of everything and there are no easy answers. This is not just a crime novel or a psychological thriller. I like that. Ian Rankin chose to be a crime novelist because he realised that a detective was the perfect tool to prise open the lid of society. He’s a serious novelist masquerading as a crime fiction writer and I believe the same is true of Ruth Dugdall. The Sacrificial Man is also topical, Sir Terry Pratchett, for one, having raised the public’s awareness of the subject. The copy I was sent has four pages at the front praising Ruth’s writing but I’ll echo what Frances Day (an Amazon reviewer) had to say: both Ruth’s novels are a “refreshing change from the usual crime mystery, populated with real character you can believe in.” I would have no problems reading her next book but I would like to see something a little different next time. When William McIlvanney (another serious novelist) wrote his third and final Laidlaw novel rather than writing in the third person as he had done in his first two novels he wrote Strange Loyalties in the first person presenting a very different book. I would like to see Cate Austin come out of the shadows.

I thought I’d ask Ruth about this.

In your e-mail to me you said that you deliberately toned down Cate’s role in this book because Smith, and Alice, especially, are such large characters. That wasn’t the case in the first book and yet I still felt that she lacked in many ways. I see from reading other reviewers that this is the common criticism of your protagonist. How do you think you’ll avoid us saying the same about her next time?

I’m responding all the time to what readers tell me. Because it took me several years to find a publisher I was, to a large extent, writing in something of a void, not sure how my novels would be received by the general public. Now that I am in the fortunate position of being published I often hear from readers, especially at book groups (I usually visit one every few weeks) and what I am hearing is that people are intrigued by Cate and want more of her.

In earlier drafts of The Sacrificial Man there was more of Cate’s back-story, but I felt it distracted from Alice’s narrative (which, for me, is the pulse of the novel) so I deleted it. I’ve learned that readers see Cate as the voice of reason and are also interested in the rarely portrayed probation perspective. My next Cate Austin novel (Humber Boy B – a work in progress) will see her coming more into the foreground, and will reveal what motivated her to train as a probation officer. Readers have guessed that she has some skeletons in her cupboard and it’s time for me to reveal some of them.

In both of these books the ‘bad guy’ is actually a woman. Obviously your experience working as a probation officer brought you in contact with a lot of ‘bad’ women. Do you think that the way that women are treated in the criminal justice system is different to males; mad rather than bad?

I feel this very strongly. For me one of the final frontiers of feminism is to acknowledge that women are equally capable of violence, of harm, of terrible deeds, as men. As a society we are still shocked when women are involved in violent or sexual crimes and prefer to believe that the woman was either under the influence of a male or mentally ill. I know it’s anecdotal rather than statistical evidence, but I worked with many people who had been abused by women, and in several of the murder cases I supervised there had been women who were also involved who had avoided charge. Women are treated very differently by the Criminal Justice system and as long as that remains the case we won’t have a true picture of crime and the psychology behind it. Novels are just one way in which it is possible to challenge normal assumptions about criminal behaviour, and I hope my novels add something to this debate.

You said in a recent Radio 4 interview that motherhood was one of the reasons you started writing in the first place. Can you explain?

Well, firstly on a very practical level it gave me the time to really concentrate on writing. I’d gone from being a student into full time work, so when I was on my maternity leave it was my first real chance to really clear my head and start to pull together my ideas. I also think that when I was working I was very bound up in being a probation officer and the stresses of the job, so maternity leave gave me some distance and perspective. Motherhood is a very strong theme in both The Woman Before Me and The Sacrificial Man and having children myself meant that I cared even more about this very vital relationship. In my work I had seen how devastating it can be to have an abusive or absent mother, and it was natural for me to connect with this theme when I came to explain how Rose and Alice came to be the women they are.

I noticed that you did a lot of work on this novel using the site Authonomy. Can you tell us a bit about that experience? Is it an approach you would recommend and, if so, why?

I love Authonomy. It is a fantastically supportive environment, and I do believe it can open doors for people. At the very least it is a chance to meet (in cyberspace) with other dedicated writers and get feedback. This in itself is vital for a writer – we can’t be defensive about or work if we want to improve, and criticism that is given constructively is a gift. This is a lesson that can be learned on Authonomy, and in quite a safe way, as people are very generous with their support.

Writing is lonely, but a site like Authonomy is the virtual equivalent of the office water cooler. You can log on, enjoy a chat, read a thread, then get back to writing.

There are a lot of crime novelists out there and a seemingly never-ending stream of cop shows on TV, presumably read and watched by people who have never murdered anyone, nor would ever imagine murdering anyone. What is the attraction?

Fear. We all fear having the rug pulled out from under us, and crime novels allow us to experience this vicariously and then see the world restored to its rightful order, as usually the conclusion of a crime novel is redemptive in nature.

I believe you have two more books under your belt. Can you tell us a little about them?

The next novel that will be submitted to publishers is called My Sister and Other Liars and is a totally different kind of novel. It’s a coming of age story about Sam, a teenage girl, whose sister was attacked and left brain damaged. The police have no evidence about the attack and are closing the case so Sam has decided to find her sister’s attacker and enact her own revenge.

After that comes Innocence Lane, which is about a man who kills his wife, but says he was sleepwalking when he did this. The defence of sleepwalking has been used successfully in both the UK and USA and I think it’s a fascinating notion.

Both novels are stand-alone pieces, set in Suffolk, and feature characters introduced in TWBM and TSM, although not Cate Austin.

Well, all I can say is that I’m looking forward to reading them; Innocence Lane especially calls out.

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Although the events that take place in it follow on from The Woman Before Me, The Sacrificial Man is a standalone novel. It is published by Legend Press and the last time I looked could be bought on Amazon, new, for as little as £4.00.

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Ruth was born in 1971 and spent her early life in the Hull area, before moving to Ipswich when she was seven and her dad got a job down here. She went to Chantry High School and read voraciously – invariably darker material. “Books were always a place where you could fit in – create your own little world.”

Ruth studied a BA (Hons) degree in English and Theatre Studies at Warwick University, and then an MA in Social Work at UEA. She worked as a Probation Officer for almost a decade, working in prisons with numerous high-risk criminals. The Woman Before Me, winner of the CWA Dagger Award, was informed by her experiences.

She is married to Andrew, a human resources director with the online retailer Play.com, with whom she has a daughter, Amber, and a son, Eden.