Member Reviews
Andrea T, Media/Journalist
You absolutely have to feel for Nicki Clements. Her day starts off on a terribly bad note and progressively just gets so much worse. We've all had those days but a murder is rarely in the middle of them.
Wanting to spice up her life a little, suburban mother Nicki Clements turns to the interwebs and strikes up a fizzy online relationship with a man who is only "seeing" the best side of her, ie that which she can type quickly back rather than say to his face. The secrets Nicki needs to keep in order to keep this excitement in her life come at a cost as lie upon lie stacks up.
Seeing a police officer in the road on her school run, who once encountered Nicki at her worst, is just the beginning of the unravelling. Finding out the identity of a man murdered in the vicinity projects Nicki straight into hell.
Nicki is of course not quite what she seems, but we're crushed for her in her struggles anyway. What does work in the novel is the identifiable "everywoman" syndrome. You can easily project yourself into this novel, and see how easily any of this trainwreck could have happened. Just the wrong decision there, the odd encounter there. Traps just waiting to be fallen into.
THE TELLING ERROR does suffer a little from its overcrammed plot full of tricks that are all stuffed into the same novel, crowding out a little of what the reader needs in order to be completely caught up in the fright of Nicki's plight. The story can comes across as a little dry and mechanical as each new ploy is slotted in efficiently, one after the other.
THE TELLING ERROR is an enjoyable read of one woman's nightmare, a murder investigation, and of how easily it could happen to anyone. The reader is wincing right along with Nicki as she attempts to dig herself out of situation after situation that threatens to swamp her.
