A Deadly Deception by Margaret Thomson Davis

Val Penny ♦ March 22, 2015 ♦ Leave a comment

Margaret Thomson Davis has lived in Glasgow, Scotland, since the age of 3. She left school at the age of sixteen, working as a children’s nurse and having a variety of other jobs before achieving her ambition of becoming a writer. She is a Scottish author who has forty novels published and also over two hundred short stories published and broadcast in the UK and overseas. A Deadly Deception is a suspense thriller and it is her first venture in to crime fiction.

The story is set in a Glasgow high-rise tenement building and centres on Mabel Smith who lives alone in one of the flats. Her selfish parents had used Mabel as a slave and effectively ruined her life but now they are both dead.  However, Mabel is getting older and her crippling arthritis means she must hobble about with the help of her sticks.

Mabel feels terribly bitter and lonely. Then, one day, sitting in the doctor’s waiting room flicking through a magazine, she notices adverts for phone-sex. She is shocked and appalled but stuffs the magazine into her bag all the same! She makes a point of finding out how the system works and decides it could be an easy way to make some extra cash. A thirty-nine-year-old man called John begins phoning her. Mabel tells him her name is Angela and she and John gradually form a close and loving relationship.

John is also lonely and bitter, after being cruelly deserted by his wife, and he soon becomes eager to find out everything about Angela, especially what she looks like. Mabel then describes a beautiful blonde girl she has seen. John becomes more and more desperate to meet Angela but she keeps putting him off. Eventually he resolves to find her and punish her for tormenting him. So he follows various clues and finds the high-rise tenement and begins to watch it.

Finally, he spots a beautiful blonde girl who exactly fits the description he has of Angela but she is clinging to a young man. Feeling jealous and betrayed, John thoughts become murderous and he plans deadly revenge. A Deadly Deception is a riveting read, a real page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. This maybe a first foray into the world of crime for Margaret Thomson Davis, but I hope it will not be her last. I really enjoyed the book.

Valerie Penny