Mum's Monday: Talking to the Dead

When reading this book this diagram came into my head. The diagram came to me as interwoven shapes as parts of the story are connected and the twist seemed to spiral off, hence these shapes and an arrow. You have the murder of the mother and daughter, Janet and April that starts the whole thing off and then it circles round through another investigation into Brendon’s business interests (A lead because his credit card was found at the scene) the investigation is conducted by DC Fiona Griffiths who is coping with her own issue. This is a condition of the mind, that is a kind of depression and as she put it in the book ‘She felt dead for 2 years.’ Extreme forms cause the person with this to see their flesh decompose during a hallucination. The story circles back to solving the murder case of Janet and April.

The bigger of the 2 shapes is the plot of the book where a mother and daughter were murdered and then you have the business interests of Brendan Rattigan. The smaller shape is the condition Fiona is dealing with, but still getting on with her job. Showing that even if you have something wrong with you, as long as the nature of it doesn’t impede too much on your day to day life or your job, you can still function at both reasonably well. The twist at the end snaking off shows what you can learn about your own life whilst doing your job.

We don’t often focus on the police officer that take the case, so when this book does and with the added condition that DC Fiona is dealing with, this makes for a picturesque vision, as in this diagram.

An excellent, well-written book is meant to give you a sense you are there. When Fiona spent the night in the morgue with the bodies of the murder victims, Janet and April, and how it made her feel alive. I could picture Fiona’s sense of being alive and got behind her reason for being there.

it is good to see a book with the main character with her own issues to deal with. It would be great to see more relatively unknown conditions being portrayed in books and across other media, and to show them in a light; as the people with conditions as being normal, which they are quite rightly are.