Nothing to Fear

Why do women in thrillers, when told not to enter a locked room, insist on finding the key and going in? Nothing good ever came of it, as the legendary Mrs Bluebeard found and now the newly divorced Ginny Clark discovers to her cost. Before, she was getting on famously with her new neighbour, Sean, even if he did seem a little shy, had three locks on his front door and was happy to beat Ginny's abusive former husband to a pulp. In the locked room she finds evidence that Sean could be a serial killer. But is he? Ginny and her investigative journalist friend start looking into Sean's background and do not like what they find. The plot, while not altogether original, has great potential, but it all gets bogged down in awkward dialogue, rather pedestrian prose and depressingly clichéd situations - including a very stilted confrontation in Bluebeard's Cove in Herne Bay. One somehow expects more class from the editor of the Spectator.