I See You by Clare Mackintosh
Recently, when I was on my travels, I found a book my husband had been looking for, so I bought it and, as I had the opportunity to buy another book for half price, I chose I See You by Clare Mackintosh. 
Clare Mackintosh is a British author from Bristol. She, like novelist Karen Campbell, is a former policewoman. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant now writes full time and now lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.
I have not read her debut novel, I Let You Go but it was very well received. It was a Richard & Judy book club pick. It won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016, beating J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. She is a respected author.
The heroine of I See You, Zoe Walker, is a forty-something mother of two teenagers. She is on her way home from a job she hates. When she eventually secures a seat she looks through the evening paper to find a picture of herself looking up from the less savoury columns of the personal ads. It throws her, as it would anyone. Her family rally to her support, all persuading her it is nothing but a strange coincidence. The picture is not of her at all. But she knows, and we know, and some sinister third party who speaks in italics knows, that it is. Soon afterwards Zoe sees a similar ad, only this time with the picture of another woman. When that woman is found strangled in Muswell Hill, Zoe phones the police.
Zoe finds a champion in Kelly Swift, a disgraced detective who has been sent to the gulag of transport policing for misconduct and badly needs her shot at redemption. With Zoe’s lead about the classified ads, Kelly gets it and elbows her way back on to the murder investigation. As computer experts burrow their way into findtheone.com, they discover that the site is refreshed each week with details of a new entry: a woman who is simultaneously pictured in the paper. For a hefty premium visitors to the site receive a listing containing minute details of her daily commute, including what she wears, which ticket machine she uses at the station, where she sits on the train, and ends up with a suggested rating: easy, moderate, difficult. It is really creepy.
Mackintosh builds a convincing and complex emotional backstory for both women throwing enough teasing red herrings to leave us vaguely suspicious of everyone in their lives. This clever and plausible thriller is one with which it is all too easy to relate. Your fellow commuters might be just that, or then again, they might not. The daily trek into work will never be quite the same again. I found this novel interesting and exciting. If you enjoy psychological thrillers, I See You by Clare Mackintosh is well worth reading.
Valerie Penny
Recently, when I was on my travels, I found a book my husband had been looking for, so I bought it and, as I had the opportunity to buy another book for half price, I chose I See You by Clare Mackintosh.
Clare Mackintosh is a British author from Bristol. She, like novelist Karen Campbell, is a former policewoman. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant now writes full time and now lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.
I have not read her debut novel, I Let You Go but it was very well received. It was a Richard & Judy book club pick. It won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016, beating J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. She is a respected author.
The heroine of I See You, Zoe Walker, is a forty-something mother of two teenagers. She is on her way home from a job she hates. When she eventually secures a seat she looks through the evening paper to find a picture of herself looking up from the less savoury columns of the personal ads. It throws her, as it would anyone. Her family rally to her support, all persuading her it is nothing but a strange coincidence. The picture is not of her at all. But she knows, and we know, and some sinister third party who speaks in italics knows, that it is. Soon afterwards Zoe sees a similar advertisement, only this time with the picture of another woman. When that woman is found strangled in Muswell Hill, Zoe phones the police.
Zoe finds a champion in Kelly Swift, a disgraced detective who has been sent to the gulag of transport policing for misconduct and badly needs her shot at redemption. With Zoe’s lead about the classified ads, Kelly gets it and elbows her way back on to the murder investigation. As computer experts burrow their way into findtheone.com, they discover that the site is refreshed each week with details of a new entry: a woman who is simultaneously pictured in the paper. For a hefty premium visitors to the site receive a listing containing minute details of her daily commute, including what she wears, which ticket machine she uses at the station, where she sits on the train, and ends up with a suggested rating: easy, moderate, difficult. It is really creepy.
Mackintosh builds a convincing and complex emotional backstory for both women throwing enough teasing red herrings to leave us vaguely suspicious of everyone in their lives. This clever and plausible thriller is one with which it is all too easy to relate. Your fellow commuters might be just that, or then again, they might not. The daily trek into work will never be quite the same again. I found this novel interesting and exciting. If you enjoy psychological thrillers, I See You by Clare Mackintosh is well worth reading.
Valerie Penny
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