Five Strangers

Lots of twists and turns and a shocking ending...

I felt that Five Strangers by E.V. Adamson (a pseudonym for journalist-biographer-detective novelist Andrew Wilson) was based on a really interesting premise, but ultimately fell a little short of my expectations.
On an unseasonably sunny Valentine's Day in London, several couples and individuals converge separately on the Parliament Hill Viewpoint on Hampstead Heath, enjoying the sun and the panoramic view of the city skyline.

Sitting on the various park benches set out on the brow of the hill are disgraced (and now unemployed) journalist Jen Hunter, who's waiting for her friend Bex to arrive, hedge fund manager Jamie Blackwood, his partner Alex Hughes and their dog, Ayesha Ahmed, a young doctor on her lunch break and Labour MP Julia Jones, who's stopped to take a brief break from jogging. The titular five strangers are horrified as they witness the exchange between a young couple occupying another bench turn from romantic to deadly, as a violent argument breaks out and the young man, Daniel Oliver, attacks his girlfriend Victoria Da Silva with a broken champagne bottle. Jen and Jamie attempt to disarm Daniel and calm the situation, while Ayesha steps in to provide first aid.
Having been recently "let go" from her position as a columnist at a major London newspaper, Jen is at a loose end professionally and personally. With the encouragement of her aging but glamorous landlady, Penelope Frasier - herself a former hack - she sees an opportunity to leverage her unique perspective into an article she can sell to a newspaper for some much-needed income. Jen makes contact with and begins interviewing each of her fellow witnesses, probing their recollections of the pivotal events on the Heath and how the reverberations of their shared traumatic experience has affected each of them in their day-to-day lives. However, the more she learns, the more she begins to question the narrative of what she and the other bystanders actually witnessed that day on the Heath - could there be more to the story than she thought, and how might the events connect to her own personal life?
This struck me as a great premise for a novel investigating the ripples caused acts of violence and the - often undocumented - longer-term trauma experienced by random bystanders and good samaritans. The vagaries of eyewitness testimony and recollection are well-known, providing intriguing fodder for a mystery. In the early stages of reading, I had also anticipated a redemptive storyline for journalist Jen, the nature of whose personal and professional transgressions are gradually revealed over the course of the story.
However, Five Strangers actually turned out to be more a psychological thriller, with alternating unreliable narrators in Jen and Bex and a plot that I felt was more convoluted than intricate. We're drip-fed tantalising details from the long history of the two women's intense but dysfunctional friendship. Jen's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and ill-considered as she chases down yet-to-be identified witnesses who fled the scene and learns crucial information about the nature of Victoria and Daniel's relationship. Meanwhile, the reader begins to question Bex's role in enabling or encouraging Jen's fragile mental state. I found it hard to accept these characters as successful professional women aged in their early 40s, as their personal preoccupations and histrionic behaviour seemed more fitting to women at least fifteen years younger, even allowing for complex psychology.
That said, it was an action-packed, if pretty crazy, ride to the final reveal and an entertaining read for those willing to suspend their disbelief a little. I'm yet to read any of Andrew Wilson's series featuring author Agatha Christie as a sleuth, however I assume that Five Strangers is quite a departure from the style he employs in those books. On that basis, I can understand the reasoning behind the use of a nom de plume.
I can't see any real scope for this novel to spawn a series itself, but I would love to read more of the supporting character Penelope Frasier. She'd make a great amateur sleuth, with all those old journalistic contacts, her ability to spot male fides, not to mention her capacious Hampstead home as a setting for putting witnesses at their ease...
I'd recommend Five Strangers to readers who are comfortable with unreliable female characters / narrators and tangled narratives with lots of unexpected twists and turns.
My thanks to author E.V. Adamson (Andrew Wilson), publisher HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and NetGalley UK for the opportunity to read and review this title.