Michelle Dunne

4.5
Book source ~ BBNYA & author

Lindsey Ryan is out of the military, but her time served hasn’t let go of her. She’s just trying to do the best she can day after day, but someone is stalking her, eroding what little sanity she has hung on to. Will Lindsey survive combat only to succumb back in civilian life?

This is a gripping thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Lindsey is going through a lot. PTSD is no joke, but she doesn’t want help from anyone. Which frustrates me, but hey, to each their own. Even if their coping mechanisms are shit. Anyway, the characters are great, the mystery stalker kept me guessing, and the best part is Frank, the dog. Because, you know, doggo! Doggos always get star billing.… (plus d'informations)

I had 'The Invisible' on pre-order because I'd gotten to know Lindsey Ryan in 'While Nobody Is Watching' and I wanted to know what she did next. I'd expected a continuation of the low-key but honest and insightful storytelling style of the first book. To my surprise and delight, while the honesty and insight remained, the storytelling was anything but low-key. I was ten per cent into the book and the tension was already almost unbearable. I could see that this wasn't going to be a thriller that kept hinting at dark secrets buried in the past to create tension; it was a book that banged me, face-first, into a wall of unpleasant reality and promised that there'd be much worse to come.

The plot setup is fairly simple. Lindesy Ryan has established herself in the tiny town of Cobh running a very basic teashop in a ramshackle building that she bought cheap and has done up herself. She's left her past and her friends behind in Cork City so that she can fight her PTSD demons somewhere where no one knows that she's Corporal Lindsey Ryan, the Irish soldier that got so badly hurt by an IED when she was on a tour of duty as a UN peacekeeper in Syria. She's keeping her head down as best she can. She, like everyone else, knows that there's a brothel run by a violent crime boss two houses up from her café. The reality of what that means only becomes clear to her when a woman from the brothel falls, naked, used and beaten into Lindsey's yard and the brothel owner comes looking for his property back and quietly promises dire consequences for Lindsey if this doesn't happen.

I thought using Cobh for this story was inspired. It's a pretty little town built on a steep hill on Great Island in Cork Harbour and connected to the mainland by a single bridge. Once the main point of departure for the millions of Irish emigrating to America, these days Cobh is mainly a tourist destination, famous for its colourful buildings. Showing that this pretty little place is home to something as banally evil as sexual slavery and that everyone in the town turns a blind eye is a powerful way of showing how human trafficking flourishes.

What I liked even more, was that 'The Invisible' doesn't read like an attack on the concept of sexual slavery. It's far more direct and personal than that. There's nothing theoretical here, just the reality of callous abuse, human misery and public indifference. The storytelling is characterised by an intense immediacy that doesn't allow for any emotional distance. Lindsey is confronted with the humanity of the abused and the unsensationalised brutality of the abusers. Once she sees this, she knows she can't look away.

What raises 'The Invisible' above other thrillers, in my view, is that, while Lindsey Ryan is tough and competent, she isn't invulnerable. She's not some ex-special forces guy who always has a plan. She's not Jack Reacher or Evan Smoak. She's a woman so scarred by what's already happened to her that death sometimes feels like it might be a release. But she can't walk away from the evil next door. She refuses to have more people on her conscience. So she stands up and does what's needed. But there's no macho confrontation. No calling out of the bad guy. She's trying hard to be seen as the tea lady next door until she can find a way off the island.

I found the story totally engaging, not in a 'How will Lindsey get out of this?' intellectual way but more in a watching each scene from behind my hands and going 'This is bad. Very bad. And it's going to get worse.' Lindsey is competent and brave but that doesn't mean that she's going to win and it certainly doesn't mean that she's not going to get hurt, on the other hand, it's clear she's not going to stop.

'The Invisible' is stronger because the other characters in the book, the ones who want to help Lindsey, the ones she wants to help and the ones who want to stop her, all seem very real. The book captures the reactions of people in a small town ridden by both fear and guilt and seeded with a little bit of hope, very well.

The ending caught me by surprise. It's tough and plausible and not very pleasant.

I had a great time with this book and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a well-crafted, edge- of-theseat thriller that also engages unblinkingly with the ugly realities of modern slavery.… (plus d'informations)

I don't think that it does justice to 'While Nobody Is Watching' to describe it as a psychological thriller. A thriller sets out to thrill. A psychological thriller sets out to mess with the reader's expectations and to harness irrational or pathological behaviour to create tension, spring surprise and strengthen the thrill the reader feels. I don't think that that's what this book sets out to do.

Yes, the main character is under threat from an unknown person and yes that threat escalated steadily and kept me guessing about its source and turning the pages to find out what would happen next, so I can see why the thriller label might be used

The thing is, I read 'While Nobody Is Watching' as a fundamentally honest book that gives an unflinching account of what PTSD does to Lindsey Ryan, an ex-soldier who now works with troubled kids in Cork. It speaks to the guilt of having survived, the dislocation from no longer being in the Army with people who understand what you've been through, the delusions and nightmares that make you fear for your sanity, the depression that makes you want to just make everything stop, the mood swings that drive risk-taking behaviour, and the embarrassment and anxiety that carrying visible physical scars across much of your body cause.

This is a book that manages to be high on authenticity without feeling like a lecture or a documentary because the authenticity centres around Lindsey Ryan herself. You see her at her worst and at her best. She feels real in a way that pushes her out of the typical thriller role of competent woman in distress and makes her into an individual who is doing her best with what she has.

I liked that nothing about Lindsey is romanticised and, by the end, nothing is hidden. The relationships between her and her ex-army comrades feel real and strong but it doesn't feel like top-gun bullshit. These are ordinary people who have bonded because they've been through hell together and come out the other side. The relationships that Lindsey has with the kids also feel real. there are no Hallmark moments here, just a believable mix of strong emotions, big problems and occasional small wins.

The thriller element of the book seems to me mainly to be there to drive Lindsey to face up to the challenges in her life, to decide if she has the desire and the will to continue to live and to get her to reach out to the people around her to regain connections that will help her deal with her pain.

What I took away from reading the book wasn't the solution to who was threatening Lindsey and why but the feeling of having met, understood and liked a woman who was facing up to some serious problems.

When the second Lindsey Ryan book, 'The Invisible', is published this month, I'll be buying it not because I'm looking for a psychological thriller but because I want to know what Lindsey Ryan does next.
… (plus d'informations)