Keep Her Safe (Did You See Melody?, UK title)
Sophie Hannah, 2017
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062388322
Summary
She's the most famous murder victim in America. What if she's not dead?
Pushed to the breaking point, Cara Burrows flees her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied — by a man and a teenage girl.
A simple mistake at the front desk… but soon Cara realizes that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving natural life sentences for her murder.
Cara doesn't know what to trust — everything she's read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Manchester, England, UK
• Education—University of Manchester
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, England
Sophie Hannah is a British poet and fiction writer — with more than 15 novels (mostly mysteries), a dozen volumes of short stories and/or poetry, as well as several children's books. She was born in Manchester, England; her father was the academic Norman Geras and her mother the author Adele Geras. Hannah attended the University of Manchester.
At only 24, Hannah published her first book of poems, The Hero and the Girl Next Door and has gone on to publish others. In 2004, she was named one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her poems are studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK.
In 2006 she turned to writing psychological crime novels, starting with Little Face, which has sold more than 100,000 copies. That novel was the first of 10 featuring detectives Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer. Two of those novels — The Point of Rescue (2008) and The Other Half Lives (2009) were adapted into the TV series Case Sensitive, starring Darren Boyd (as Waterhouse) and Olivia Williams (as Zailer).
Recognition
From 1997 to 1999 Hannah was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 a junior research fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.
She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge where she is a Fellow Commonor of Lucy Cavendish College. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/5/2017.)
Book Reviews
Her plots are ingenious — she’s a writer in complete command of her material — and it’s O.K. if you haven’t quite kept up. She keeps you puzzled and intrigued, right until the end.
New York Times Book Review
Hannah… excels at creating credible plot twists; the two in Keep Her Safe — one at the climax, one at the denouement — evoke gasps. Deftly played and instantly addictive, Hannah’s latest novel reaffirms her excellence and further elevates her stature.
Richmond Times Dispatch
Sophie Hannah…has clearly mastered the psychological methodology [of] Gillian Flynn or Tana French. Her unreliable narrator commands our attention and even our sympathy.
NPR
[U]necessarily complex…. The present-day plot devolves into a… free-for-all, with Cara inexplicably at the center. Hannah, known for her labyrinthine plots, loses her way early on.
Publishers Weekly
As Lisa Gardner says, Hannah puts "the psycho in psychological suspense," and here's her first novel set in America, specifically, sun-bleached Arizona.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Hannah [takes]all the reassuring certitudes mystery novels take for granted and demonstrate how much fun it is to toss them overboard. There's no point in objecting to the coincidences and implausibilities required to launch this brilliant nightmare: resistance is futile.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the book, Cara Burrows has temporarily abandoned her family. Do you understand her actions? Is she is a sympathetic character?
2. Would you want to stay at the Swallowtail resort? Is it lovely and luxurious, or oppressively perfect?
3. The novel features a range of parent-child relationships, and Cara is pregnant. What point or points do you think the author is trying to make about parent-child relationships?
4. Is the media a force for good or bad in this book? Can you draw any parallels between the media as it appears here and in real life?
5. Cara Burrows is, like Sophie Hannah, British. Laws surrounding the media and criminal justice are stricter in the UK than in the USA. Does Cara’s outsider perspective affect how the concept of a free press is presented?
6. Is it possible to divide the characters into "good" and "bad"? Which characters are looking for justice?
7. Is justice finally served?
8. Did the final twist change how you thought about everything you had read before?
(Questions from the author's website.)