Listen to the Shadows: A Novel [Hardcover]

Danuta Reah (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2001

In the tradition of novels by Elizabeth George and Minette Walters, Listen to the Shadows is an edgy and atmospheric psychological thriller about a woman who becomes both the hunter and the target of a clever killer.

Underneath the shadow of an antique waterwheel in a city park, Suzanne Milner discovers the body of a young woman. The case is assigned to Detective Inspector Steve McCarthy, a tenacious cop who is determined to solve the crime. Suzanne is reluctantly pulled into the mystery of the young woman's life and death. Yet her understanding of events may be impaired by her struggle to overcome demons from her past. DI McCarthy's routine questioning of Suzanne leaves him with no clear answers, and as he tries to overcome her maddening evasions, he finds himself more and more drawn to her.

McCarthy's leads are taking him around blind corners to dead ends when another body is found in the same location and bearing an eerie resemblance to the first. Then the investigation kicks into high gear. What had seemed a crime with no leads and few connections reveals itself instead to be part of a twisted web of need and desire, in which Suzanne's best intentions could become her ultimate undoing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published last year in the U.K. under the title Silent Playgrounds, British author Reah's unsettling and somewhat creepy psychological thriller explores the extent to which one child's fantasies prove frighteningly real. The story opens with the police search for missing six-year-old Lucy Fielding and her babysitter, Emma, in a neighborhood park in Sheffield, England. Lucy's mother, Jane, and Jane's best friend, Suzanne Milner, are frantic until Lucy is found safe in nearby woods. Emma is not as lucky her dead body is discovered in an abandoned section of the park. Lucy, a stoic child with a vivid imagination, explains that there are monsters in the park, yet no one takes the child seriously except Suzanne, and an investigation ensues. Suzanne, a research academic who works with delinquent teens, had been jogging in the park the morning of the murder and thinks she saw one of the teens she counsels hanging around the crime scene. As she works alongside the police and gives credence to Lucy's drawing and stories, the killer closes in on her. When a second body is found and a seedy student drug ring is uncovered, Suzanne realizes that the delinquent teens she researches are not just guilty of petty crime but may be involved in much more sinister and complex activities. This atmospheric thriller starts off with potentially interesting characters and good pacing, but languishes toward the middle with little fresh action to tide the reader over until the puzzling and unexpected ending. The meticulously detailed suburban English setting and Reah's literary touch will appeal to those who appreciate a more sophisticated and subdued suspense tale, but readership on this side of the Atlantic will be limited.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Why is it that those who analyze others are so often haunted by demons of their own? Perhaps it's the empathy they feel for their patients, or, more likely, it's their way of escaping their own troubled pasts. Suzanne Milner, a student specializing in treating troubled children, is one such person. When her neighbor's daughter, Lucy, disappears, Suzanne traipses through the park in her English neighborhood searching for the young girl. Horrified, Suzanne thinks she finds Lucy, but, instead, it is the body of Lucy's flighty baby-sitter. Lucy is home safe, insisting that there are monsters in the park, and only Suzanne seems to understand the troubled girl. Then another young girl's body is found. Can Suzanne help these children, despite facing haunting shadows of her own, despite her seeming inability to communicate with her own son? Detective Steve McCarthy has his own doubts about Suzanne, as his investigation begins to unravel the terrible, complex story behind the senseless murders. This is one effective thriller. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (June 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060199644
• ISBN-13: 978-0060199647
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,861,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Danuta Reah who also writes as Carla Banks grew up with stories. Her father, a Belarusian cavalry officer, kept his past alive by telling his children stories of his childhood in the forests of Eastern Europe. She lives in South Yorkshire and uses her urban background in her books. The settings range from the claustrophobic parochialism of the South Yorkshire mining communities to the international stage of new Europe and beyond. Her most recent book, Strangers, is set in the ex-pat community in Saudi Arabia. Crime - or at least dissent - runs in the family. One of her ancestors, John Woodcock, was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1646 for his religious beliefs.

In 2005, she won the Crime Writers' Association Short Story Dagger for her story No Flies on Frank.

Books: Fiction. Writing as Danuta Reah: Only Darkness, Silent Playgrounds (published in the US as Listen to the Shadows), Night Angels, Bleak Water
Writing as Carla Banks: The Forest of Souls, Strangers
Non-Fiction
The Language of Newspapers, Working with Texts

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good dark mystery, August 3, 2001

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Listen to the Shadows: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a rather unsettling and dark mystery novel that centers on psychologically disturbed teenagers and dysfunctional familial relationships. However, "Listen To The Shadows" is also a very interesting and absorbing read, and in spite of the fact that the prose style is sometimes a little heavy going, I'd urge anyone who picks up this book to plough on: it's worth the effort.

Suzanne Milner is a graduate student who is currently working on the thesis that a lack of communication skills and violence is somehow interlinked. In order to see if her premise holds any credibility, Suzanne has been allowed to work with the troubled male teens of the Alpha Project. However all her excitement and enthusiasm for her research comes to a crashing halt when her neighbour and best friend, Jane's six year old, Lucy, and her baby-sitter, Emma, go missing one day. Suzanne had been jogging in the park that both Emma and Lucy had gone missing from, and Suzanne thinks she saw one of the teens she's currently working with moving about furtively in the park. Motivated by curiosity as well as fear, Suzanne goes back to the park, and discovers the body of the dead baby-sitter under the antique water-wheel. Investigation into Emma's past reveals that she had misrepresented herself to Jane, and that Jane's previous baby-sitter, who had been a friend of Emma's is also missing. D.I. Steve McCarthy, who has been assigned to the case is determined to discover who murdered Emma; unfortunately he is hampered by the fact his only witness to the crime is a six year old who seems to be obsessed with monsters that live in the park. He also feels that Suzanne knows far more than she is revealing. Unlukily for McCarhty, Suzanne has had unfortunate dealing with the police, and is reluctant to be more forthcoming. And for D.I. McCarthy it is becoming a race against time to see if he can make sense of Suzanne's evasions in order to apprehend a murderer. And then the body of another young woman is found in the park. Will Suzanne be able to put her reservations about the police behind her in order to stop a very twisted murderer from striking again?

"Listen To The Shadows" is a rather dark and disturbing mystery novel about need, desire, dysfunctional familial relationships, and children. The plot premise is an interesting and riveting one -- each new development in the investigation opened a whole host of possibilities, as to suspects and motive. And while Danuta Reah's prose style is sometimes a little heavy handed, the effort made not to skim pages really paid off. This is a really absorbing and brilliant read, that will tax the brain cells and keep you riveted for hours!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, disturbing and gripping, September 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Listen to the Shadows (Mass Market Paperback)

A lot of thrillers can leave the reader with a sense of dissatisfaction. This one has real depth - it's a book I could easily read more than once, and find more in it on the next read. It has all the right elements for a mystery - it's scary and exciting, and the ending surprised me. But it also had characters of great psychological depth. Suzanne is a woman who has problems realting to her child and is struggling with terrible guilts from her past, the cop, Steve McCarthy, is interestingly ambivalent, and Lucy, the little girl, is a tour-de-force. It is really difficult to write children realistically - Lucy is a great creation. The story moves slowly but inexorably through its dark, urban setting to a real edge-of-the-seat conclusion in a derelict block of flats in the city centre. This is powerful stuff

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting gothic -like mystery, June 26, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Listen to the Shadows: A Novel (Hardcover)

Suzanne Milner lived in Sheffield, England all her life and is very familiar with the local judicial system, especially involving juveniles. When her mother died, her father informed her that she would become a surrogate parent to her brother Adam. Suzanne did her best, but alas Adam fell in with a bad crowd and was eventually caught in an illegal act. When the police asked Suzanne where her brother was hiding, she told them. Adam was caught and incarcerated to a short stay at a juvenile facility. He could not handle the place and killed himself. Her father blamed Suzanne for Adam's death.

Years later, Suzanne realized she is incapable of taking care of her own child and gives up custody to her husband. She starts life anew, but is quickly torn asunder when she finds the murdered corpse of the baby-sitter of her neighbor's child. She is drawn into a homicide investigation that eerily reminds her of her self as the sins of the father is inflicted on the child.

MP>Fans of Elizabeth Peters will want to read Danuta Reah's excellent police procedural. LISTEN TO THE SHADOWS comes down squarely on the nurturing side of the psychological debate between environment and hereditary. The characters are three-dimensional and the story line is very entertaining. The adjustments of the cast to what life throws at them is also very realistic and shows that Ms. Reah knows much about human nature. This author has the talent to take her to the top.

Harriet Klausner