This took me a while to get into but I then found this a really great read. Full of twists and turns and a great thriller

Polio remembered.
A mystery surrounding the polio vacination.
Wilf has been affected by polio and has struggled with the consequences of catching it throughout his life. His has lost his wife and his daughter and is now happily married to Dora a larger than life woman. Phinny is Wilf's beloved Granddaughter, he has always been there for her through any difficulties.
Phinny is a nurse living alone and very health conscious, she takes her diet very seriously as she may carry the gene for breast cancer.. When her Granddad Wilf dies suddenly, suicide is suspected but on comparing notes with Dora, she is convinced that he was murdered.
A polio vaccination was developed by Coulters a pharmaceutical firm in 1957, Wilf and his friend Philip worked there together during their summer holidays, Phinny contacts a reporter Matt who shares her suspicions that something in the past may have triggered Wilf's murder, enrolling help from other employees they try to find out the truth.
Interesting concept, good pace and lively characters.
Thank you NetGalley and Jane for this ARC.

There’s multiple viewpoints and two timelines with this one as you follow Phiney as she tries to understand her grandfather’s decision to end his life and characters that he knew as a young boy. Whilst they grapple with Wilf’s death, they learn his isn’t the only death which leads to their own investigation.

Whilst the blurb of this one really appealed to me, I will admit that I struggled with most of this one. Parts really grabbed me (particularly the moral question of what’s better - to live a lie that hurt no one or insist on a truth that causes great grief) but the flashbacks to the past and the pacing struggled to keep my attention.

Thanks to NetGalley, the team at Verve Books, and the author for the opportunity to read this review copy.

Brilliant. Medical thrillers and their adjacents have certainly changed since the pandemic and this is one of the best - it navigates medical ethics in a slow, ponderous, meaningful way that had me read it all in one sitting. Absolutely brilliant

A proper page-turner which doesn't shy away from gritty emotions. Will definitely look for more from this author

A thriller with a difference - what happened in 1957 that still has repercussions today, causing an elderly man to suddenly take his own life?

What we unravel is a lifetime of secrets guarding consequences that would have had huge repercussions at the time - and still would today.

Exploring the thorny topic of ethics in the medical industry, this has a very modern feel to it. The main character has very strong morals and ideals, but as the pieces start to fit together and the true picture comes to light, finds these challenged - it's not always easy, simple or straightforward and not everyone agrees. The shades of grey are everywhere.

The twists and turns kept things entertaining, overall an enjoyable story with an ending that left me feeling unsettled - what happened next? Do I agree with the character's decision or would I have chosen differently? This would be a great read for a bookclub to get the debates going.

Firstly, I really hope that the topic of this book doesn’t put people off post-Covid. I enjoyed the characters (although I do wish that Jack had stayed with the family). I’d describe it as literature-come-crime and really enjoyed how it all came together. I didn’t know much about the polio epidemic so would probably have preferred that historical context as a preamble but that could just be my own ignorance. Not the book exactly but the book club questions were well considered and I’ve recommended this for a book club I’m involved with for future months as a result. I’d like to see a follow up to this book with Mat and see some of the familiar characters pop up for a cameo!

This is the third novel I have read by this author and I have enjoyed them all.

This new story is somewhat different from her Jen Shaw books, but yet again it has a really meaningful, hard hitting and well researched story at it's heart.
The story opens with an intriguing mystery, as our main character, Phiney, discovers that her grandfather has died, yet it appears that he has taken his own life by jumping off a railway bridge in the town where she lives. She can not understand this. Why would he want to do something like this?
As she begins to 'investigate' what could have happened to lead up to this, the novel opens up into a complex, interesting and engaging mystery read, with a very moving storyline at it's core.
I felt that the author had researched the subject well, as I do with all her books, and the characters were fleshed out and added interest and intrigue.
I enjoyed the way in which it was written, hearing from the different characters involved and found the ending both moving and satisfying.

A book that makes you think. The storyline covers an accidental leak of polio disease from a laboratory and how easy it is to cover it up and find scapegoats. As if that could ever happen! Scary piece of fiction.

This was a slow starter for me, and it took me a little to get used to Phiney and her attitude; sometimes she was harsher to Dora than necessary which irked me.

I loved the format of this book; told between 3 different points of views in almost a diary format making it easy to track where you were.

The underlying mystery is a slow burner and much doesn't get revealed until a good chunk into the book; but it's always there lurking. I did not see the twist coming and it broke my heart the way it happened.

The research Jesmond has put into this novel is evident as it's so well done.

Highly recommend this to everyone who loves a good mystery thriller.

Thank you to Netgalley and Verve for a copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

A must for every mystery, who-dunnit lovers! I did not expect the story arc in this book and I am so glad - it added to the mystery throughout and made this book hard to put down.
I needed to know why Wilf committed suicide and what had led up to that point. I was also interested to find this was based on a real life incident ‘Cutter Incident’ in the US which I then went on to look into more.
A great read and one I would definitely recommend.

This is a brilliant novel and I wish I’d read it sooner! The plot is flawlessly executed and I thought the author showed brilliant attention to detail in developing her cast of characters, with a really likeable protagonist in Phiney being a particular highlight.

"What was better? Living a lie that hurt no one? Or insisting on a truth that would create huge grief – in every sense of the word?"

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I started this book, but I was not at all disappointed. This one was filled with tension, action, spine tingling suspense and one secret worth killing to keep buried.
It started out strong and never lost momentum throughout. The multiple timelines and POVs were executed well, and it was easy to keep track of everyone and everything.
The buildup to the big mystery reveal was amazingly done and I was left feeling shocked, disgusted and completely devastated when I realized what was done in 1957.
It did take me a while to warm up to Phiney in the beginning, I didn't care for how she treated Dora at times but in the end, I ended up loving her character. Which brings me to my next point, her character development was really well done also, and I loved how her relationship with Dora developed into something much more positive.
This book was so much more than a historical fiction. It's a mystery and thriller all wrapped into one and I enjoyed every bit of it. Never was I bored; never did I want to not finish.

Thank you to Netgalley, Verve books and the author for my eARC of this book. I leave my review voluntarily.
A Quiet Contagion is out now!

Its June 2017 and Phiney (Josephine) Wistman’s much loved grandfather Wilf is dead. She discovers this in a garbled message from her distraught step-grandmother Dora, who is coming down to Coventry from Matlock. Wilf died in Coventry, so Dora assumed that he had gone down to visit Phiney, but she knew nothing about his visit. The mystery deepens when the police say it is suicide and not some tragic accident. They know this because there was a witness, a local journalist Mat Torrington, who confirms to Dora and Phiney what he saw. Wilf has struggled all his life with the effects from childhood polio, he is a battler, a survivor determined to wring the maximum out of life. Why would he tie his much-loved assistance dog Jack to a fence and then jump off a railway bridge? It makes no sense to Phiney and Dora cannot accept he would do such a thing. Unable to let matters lie the decide to start asking questions.

In Wilf’s old clock making workshop Phiney discovers a box of old papers, but it is one left out on the workbench that catches her eye. A newspaper clipping from The Coventry Evening Telegraph from July 1957, with a photo of 8 people outside Poulters Pharmaceuticals. Great grandfather Harry had worked there all his life, and it seems Wilf had worked there for one summer holidays when a student. Could the answers Dora and Phiney are looking for be connected to events in 1957?

If you love mysteries then you are in for a treat, not only is this a whodunnit but also a what-the-hell-did-they-do, so a two in one bargain. Rarely do I pick up a book and be unsure where the narrative arc is going, but in this case, I was flummoxed. An incident in 1957 is the key but we do not discover what it was or the magnitude until the conclusion of the story. This is so well disguised you will run through so many possibilities and that is before you need to work out who is behind it all. More than enough to keep the most demanding reader occupied.

Phiney is the central character and is the strong, resilient and capable female that the author writes so well. She is rather self -absorbed and avoids toxins, food additives and even mobile phone radiation almost like somebody wracked with OCD. There is a good reason for why she is consumed by worry, which many will empathise with. This self-obsession has damaged her relationships though, particularly with Dora, though through the story she becomes more enlightened to the plight of others.

Poor Dora is put through the emotional wringer, but it is her determination that keeps the investigation moving. As we see developments from her perspective, we warm to her.

It is journalist Mat who has the investigative skills and early in the story one character tells Phiney he is a man not to be trusted (well he is a journalist). A simple ploy but a masterstroke as you read along and to paraphrase the old Harmony Hairspray ad ‘Is he or isn’t he’ on their side.

The plot is clever and quite believable, probably more so with developments over the last twenty years. The story line does jump around between 1977, 1957 and 2017 (where it skips around a number of weeks) but it is easy to follow. The storyline is peppered with incident and low-key action before the build up to a big confrontation. There is some violence, but it delivered in an understated way that works on a psychological level rather than being graphic, sometimes the mind worrying what might happen proves worse than the reality. As with the events of 1957, it’s the dawning realisation of what has happened. All skilfully expressed within the prose.

The central theme is one of trust versus deception. The modern world works on a basis of trust be it paper money and investments to what we surround ourselves with and put in our bodies. Our new three-piece suite has a label to say it is fire resistant, which we take on trust, but is it? Once trust is eroded the system collapses, best illustrated by the queues outside banks when there are rumours about it which then become self-perpetuating. Throughout the story characters place trust in others and what they are told but behind it all is one big deception.

A mystery surrounds the suicide of an elderly man. What is the unbearable secret that lead to this tragic event.? His family can't accept it so with the help of a journalist they start asking questions. Then more people start dying. What happened back in 1957 that suddenly had so much relevance today that people are scared enough to kill? Not really surprising in the end, however an interesting look into the polio epidemic and its repercussions

In the summer of 1957, a polio epidemic cut a swath through the city of Coventry, leaving over a hundred children dead or permanently disabled. Exactly sixty years later, an elderly man named Wilfred Patterson leaps to his death from a railway bridge, leaving behind a distraught, bewildered wife and granddaughter. Unable to reconcile Wilf's actions with the man they knew, Dora and Phiney - along with a journalist, Mat, who was the only witness to Wilf's last moments - set out to find answers. And when a clue leads to the pharmaceutical company Wilf spent a summer working for decades earlier, they find themselves caught up in a much bigger secret, one which someone will do anything to protect.

Jane Jesmond's historical thriller posits the question, what if a huge corporate conspiracy was responsible for the Coventry polio epidemic? Inspired by the real-life Cutter Incident in the US, the most interesting thing about A Quiet Contagion is the way it explores the origins of vaccine hesitancy and its potential impact on public health. In her author's note, Jesmond confides that she was cautious about telling such a story in the current climate - she began work on A Quiet Contagion prior to the Covid-19 pandemic - but, on balance, telling the story of this largely forgotten chapter in English history highlights just how fortunate we are that vaccine development led to the eradication of polio, the spectre of which disease once haunted every one of the nation's parents.

The historical parts of the narrative - taking place that fateful summer and at intervals over the intervening years - are gripping and fast-paced, providing a range of perspectives on events; unfortunately, this only highlights the meandering trajectory of the 2017 story, and the shortcomings of its narrator.

Phiney is a selfish person and I found it difficult to warm to her. She is prickly and patronising towards those around her, and her inner monologue focuses largely on her fear of developing the breast cancer which killed her mother, and her subsequent obsession with avoiding carcinogens. The story of her family is marred by disease, disability and death, so her preoccupations are not unwarranted, but I did not find that they made for very interesting reading. Phiney is cold, abrasive and bratty towards Dora, the woman who has cared for her since childhood, making no allowances for the fact that her step-grandmother is grieving an incredible loss too.

Mat at least is a more interesting, nuanced character. From the moment he is introduced, we are made to question his involvement and motivation for helping Phiney and Dora, an extra layer which adds to the narrative tension of the modern-day plot.

Those culpable for the events that unfolded across sixty years are entirely voiceless; they are dead before the main story begins, or else we are told their thoughts and motivations second or thirdhand. Characters with potentially interesting subplots, such as Susan Storer and Philip Mason, do not get enough page time, while endless pages are devoted to repetitive conversations between Phiney and Mat, and to Phiney's health obsession. The story ends with myriad questions left unanswered or explained away with unsatisfying explanations that feel like afterthoughts. There are also a couple of characters - including a dog - who are completely superfluous.

Ultimately, A Quiet Contagion is a book which didn't quite hit the mark for me, but which had a lot of potential. Like the best historical fiction, it prompted me to read more widely into the context of the novel, and there is some interesting interrogation of the nature of secrets and the power of the truth, for good or ill.

Thank you to NetGalley and Verve Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

In 1957, a catastrophic event unfolds at a pharmaceutical lab in Coventry, where sixteen-year-old Wilf is spending his summer. The incident demands a concealed resolution at any expense.

Fast forward to 2017, and Phiney is devastated by the death of her grandfather, Wilf, who inexplicably leaps from a railway bridge at a Coventry station. The lone witness to this tragedy is journalist Mat Torrington.

Left grappling with a multitude of unanswered questions, Phiney, Mat, and Wilf's wife, Dora, embark on their own investigations into the circumstances surrounding Wilf's demise. It becomes evident that these seemingly disparate events, separated by six decades, are intricately linked, with Wilf being just one of the casualties.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

This was a very interesting read, revolving around an accident at a research facility in 1957. As a result of it many children contracted a crippling disease. Sixty years later one of the people who were at the facility at the times kills himself, after having met with the other six people who were present at the time. A great read that mixes sciences with ethics. The thriller aspect comes from the fact that main character Phiney, granddaughter of the man who kills himself, is more or less forced to find out the truth, by her step-grandmother Dora who cannot come to terms with her husbands' sudden death.

As the story is being told from different viewpoints and set in different times, it was sometimes a little hard to follow who said what to whom, as there are family relationships and business relationships between all characters. But, it is very well written with a good pace and character development.

Thanks to Netgalley and Verve Books for this review copy.

A quiet contagion

This is way out of my usual reading remit but I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline. The plot centres around the polio epidemic in Coventry many years ago without actually visiting that time. Instead we meet Phiney - whose beloved Grandfather recently committed suicide. Something Phiney & her Grandad’s wife Dora are struggling to get their heads around. Thoroughly distraught and confused Phiney decides to look into what happened to her Grandad to cause him to take his own life and in the process she uncovers a mystery she hadn’t bargained for.
Poulters pharmaceuticals has been a pharmaceutical giant in Coventry for many years but just what ties Phiney’s Grandad Wilf to Poulters & what could have happened that was so bad that he took his own life.
A great mystery with lots of interesting characters, I learnt lots about polio and the vaccine production process. I found it took a while to get started but I really enjoyed the book.

This book was so good! It was intriguing and really drawed me in. I'll be reading more of this authors work.