Reviewed for Reviewing the Evidence. A creepy and excellent psychological sketch of two women and a man who is going to kill one of them. My review concludes "This is not anything like the usual serial killer story in which good and evil are locked in struggle, with women's bodies used to keep score. In Wilson's wartime London, mindless violence is in the air like the dust of bombed houses. We have a tendency to romanticize the Blitz and Battle of Britain as a time when civilization stared barbarity in the eye and barbarity blinked. Yet as Wilson brings that moment back to life, it is nobody's finest hour. She is so good at evoking the everyday experience of the raids and the fear felt by airmen who know the odds against them that we begin to think the violence we do to one another in war is no more honorable or ennobling than what happens when angry, crazed men seek release by killing women."

The Lover takes place in 1940 London during the Blitz. Daily bombings, shelters, destruction, death, waiting, terror, no sleep. Wilson does a great job of describing the environment in this story of three people, and the wonderful capacity of Londoners of those days to keep going, to just survive. The focus is on a young woman, working in an office as a secretary, a prostitute, and a killer. Chapters interweave with the POV of each, often describing the same incident three times, but always from a very different perspective. It's a hypnotic, tense, fascinating story all the way to its brutal climax. I will read more Laura Wilson. 4.5 stars, completed 11/15. ( )

This book is set in the 1940's during the bombings. It is so well written that you really beleive that you are there. It revolves around three main characters, Lucy an office worker, Rene a prostitute and Jim who is in the RAF. Also there are murders but you know all along who is the baddie so there is no guessing who dunnit. There are a few moments that made me smile like when Lucy and sister but saucepans on their heads because they couldn't find the tin hats. First book for me by this author and it won't be my last. Not sure why it is called The Lover. ( )

This novel is a thriller but with the additional element of taking place in 1940 London. The story follows the lives of 3 very different people whose lives intersect in the story. It is a terrrifying time and place to live with bombs falling every night but someone is murdering prostitutes and their mutilated bodies add to the terror. Laura Wilson is indeed taking her palce as one of Britain's top mystery writers. ( )

This is set in the London of late 1940, during the Blitz, when the young pilots who mainly make up the Royal Airforce, are the heroes of London. Everywhere they go they are feted, treated with great reverence, almost as gods. They often fly several sorties a day and newly trained recruits are often killed on their first flight. Living in London itself and carrying on with 'normal life' often requires great heroism, particularly at night when the German bombers fly over with great regularity and demolish a new section of housing. People spend their nights under the kitchen table, under the stairs, or in public air raid shelters, but life goes on. And so does murder. Women ply the streets as prostitutes, offering quick diversions from the physical dangers, but this is also a dangerous profession because someone is committing murder. An interesting book because the reader knows almost from the beginning who the murderer is. It is a book also about the miscarriage of justice. You'll probably enjoy it if you like historical settings- it does make you think about what life must have been like then. And there are several 'human interest' threads too.
It is a very disorienting setting for the characters as the main local landmarks are rapidly disappearing in the constant bombing.
Many people are too afraid to leave their houses but some spend much of their time in air raid shelters.
In the Prologue, two men drunkenly weaving their way home fall over the body of a young woman who has been rather messily killed with a tin opener.The book then begins properly 5 weeks earlier when some girls go for drinks with RAF pilots and one seems to narrowly escape being raped.
There are a range of characters including Lucy who spends most of her nights under the kitchen table because of the air raids, Rene who offers quick sex for money services and picks up most of her customers in the air raid shelters, and Jim the pilot who was the potential rapist who finds flying his plane a quasi-sexual experience but can't do it with girls. ( )