I Have Something to Tell You by Susan Lewis

‘They’re all related to each other around these parts….It’s what makes them the way they are,’ says Joe, a private investigator and lawyer Jay Wells’ father figure, in I Have Something to Tell You. The retired detective is an outsider from South Gloucestershire’s moneyed class, so he sees more of the game. At the core of this beautifully crafted novel is an intricate network of wealthy families and friends. Their charming habitat is impervious to the wickedness of the outside world – until it isn’t. 

Jay Wells has it all: a successful legal career, loving husband Tom, a family she adores. One case – and one client – will put all that at risk. Is Edward Blake’s an ordinary life turned upside down – or did he quietly watch television while his wife was murdered upstairs? With more questions than answers and a case too knotted to unravel, Jay suspects Edward is protecting someone. Then she comes home one day and her husband utters the words no-one ever wants to hear - sit down because I've got something to tell you. Now Jay must fight not only for the man she defends, but for the man she thought she trusted with her life – her husband.

The lives of the leading characters are intimately interwoven. They are related through blood or marriage, or have known each other since their schooldays, or work in partnership. Some of them have achieved wealth through education, some have benefited from family businesses and some are empowered by old money. Teenagers growing up in this protected community accept its conventions and never challenge the values of their parents - at least, not openly. Jay and her pals observe the social niceties even when secrets and lies threaten to disrupt their comfortable existences. When they reach for a bottle of wine to drown their sorrows, it’s pouilly fuisse and they decant olives into a bowl to go with it. Not until a shameful betrayal is exposed is a glass thrown, and then it’s aimed at the sink.

I enjoyed the skilful way Susan Lewis creates the environment in which this twisty crime story is set. While she takes the reader on a journey through one stylish interior after another, interspersing her narrative with gruesome details from a murder investigation, it gradually becomes clear that sorrow and despair underlie some of her characters’ apparently perfect lives. The supportive friendships, sophisticated cuisine and exclusive venues Lewis describes conceal adultery and worse. Jay lives in a small town among people she has known forever, so her personal and professional personas are difficult to separate. I was equally intrigued by her involvement in Edward Blake’s case and by the marital problems she and Tom experience. When the devastating climax eventually hits, her world is blown apart through no fault of her own.

I was given a copy of I Have Something To Tell You in return for an honest review. I recommend it to lovers of country style crime novels as a rattling good read.