By Liz Soares
Detective Inspector Marnie Rome, of the London Metropolitan Police, is cool and calm, a dedicated officer. Underneath that smooth exterior, however, she’s still struggling to come to terms with her parents’ deaths. They were murdered by the foster child they’d brought into their home after Marnie set out on her own. Five years have passed, but her pain and confusion continue.
Families are at the heart of Someone Else’s Skin, British author Sarah Hillary’s first novel. They’re not happy families—this is a gritty police procedural that goes deep to explore the ways love can go bad.
Marnie and her partner, Detective Sergeant Noah Jake, are headed to a shelter for abused women to interview Ayana Mirza, a woman of Indian background. Her brothers had held her down and poured bleach in her eyes for an alleged indiscretion. Now, one of them is suspected of committing a brutal murder. Ayana’s testimony is needed.
The team arrives, however, in the middle of a bloody scene. Leo Proctor has somehow managed to get into the refuge, hiding a knife in a bouquet of flowers. His wife, Hope, has turned the weapon on him. The residents, sensitive to any kind of violence, are terrified. Noah gets Leo’s bleeding under control, and both Proctors are rushed to the hospital.
Now Marnie and Noah have another crime to investigate. It seems straightforward enough. An abusive husband tries to stab his wife. What’s to figure out? But things are not what they seem, and when Hope and her friend and fellow victim, Simone Bissell, disappear from the hospital, and Ayana from the shelter, the cases burst wide open.
Simone was born in Uganda. She underwent genital mutilation before she was adopted by a well-to-do couple and brought to London. She rebelled against her cloistered upbringing, and ended up as the girlfriend of an abusive man, Lowell Paton. In Hope, Simone has found a friend who understands her plight.
Hope is a pretty, blue-eyed blonde who looks fragile and vulnerable. As Marnie and Noah investigate, they discover that her father beat her mother. When Mrs. Reece finally got herself out of the relationship, she discovered she was suffering from cancer, and has since passed away.
Their stories are tragic, but that doesn’t mean the line between victim and perpetrator is always definitive.
At the outset, readers will assume Someone Else’s Skin is about women who were abused by their supposed loved ones. But violence and victimization come in many forms, and from either gender.
Marnie is a steely character; admirable, but not entirely likable until love enters her life late in the book. She calls it as she sees it. The women of the shelter “are the worst witnesses I’ve ever met,” she says. They’ve learned to use “lies, platitudes, whatever we want to hear,” as a defense mechanism.
Noah is of mixed-race and gay, a compassionate man who undergoes an unbearable ordeal in the course of the investigation. Though Marnie feels a need to mentor him, she also chastises herself for letting her family issues obscure her intuition about where Noah is being held captive.
Someone Else’s Skin is a gripping read, but it also raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil. It features a truly disturbing psychopath—and readers will never look at a kettlebell weight in quite the same way again.
Families are at the heart of Someone Else’s Skin, British author Sarah Hillary’s first novel. They’re not happy families—this is a gritty police procedural that goes deep to explore the ways love can go bad.
Marnie and her partner, Detective Sergeant Noah Jake, are headed to a shelter for abused women to interview Ayana Mirza, a woman of Indian background. Her brothers had held her down and poured bleach in her eyes for an alleged indiscretion. Now, one of them is suspected of committing a brutal murder. Ayana’s testimony is needed.
The team arrives, however, in the middle of a bloody scene. Leo Proctor has somehow managed to get into the refuge, hiding a knife in a bouquet of flowers. His wife, Hope, has turned the weapon on him. The residents, sensitive to any kind of violence, are terrified. Noah gets Leo’s bleeding under control, and both Proctors are rushed to the hospital.
Now Marnie and Noah have another crime to investigate. It seems straightforward enough. An abusive husband tries to stab his wife. What’s to figure out? But things are not what they seem, and when Hope and her friend and fellow victim, Simone Bissell, disappear from the hospital, and Ayana from the shelter, the cases burst wide open.
Simone was born in Uganda. She underwent genital mutilation before she was adopted by a well-to-do couple and brought to London. She rebelled against her cloistered upbringing, and ended up as the girlfriend of an abusive man, Lowell Paton. In Hope, Simone has found a friend who understands her plight.
Hope is a pretty, blue-eyed blonde who looks fragile and vulnerable. As Marnie and Noah investigate, they discover that her father beat her mother. When Mrs. Reece finally got herself out of the relationship, she discovered she was suffering from cancer, and has since passed away.
Their stories are tragic, but that doesn’t mean the line between victim and perpetrator is always definitive.
At the outset, readers will assume Someone Else’s Skin is about women who were abused by their supposed loved ones. But violence and victimization come in many forms, and from either gender.
Marnie is a steely character; admirable, but not entirely likable until love enters her life late in the book. She calls it as she sees it. The women of the shelter “are the worst witnesses I’ve ever met,” she says. They’ve learned to use “lies, platitudes, whatever we want to hear,” as a defense mechanism.
Noah is of mixed-race and gay, a compassionate man who undergoes an unbearable ordeal in the course of the investigation. Though Marnie feels a need to mentor him, she also chastises herself for letting her family issues obscure her intuition about where Noah is being held captive.
Someone Else’s Skin is a gripping read, but it also raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil. It features a truly disturbing psychopath—and readers will never look at a kettlebell weight in quite the same way again.
