Second Sight

This brilliantly crafted, slow-burn crime novel from Australian Clifford (All These Perfect Strangers) slides with delicious subtlety from a story that begins in small-town reminiscences and regrets, moves into amateur investigation blended with personal history and deep secrets, and then takes a plunge into driving thriller territory. Lawyer Eliza Carmody knows she will get little sympathy in her hometown of Kinsale, Australia, because she’s there not only to visit her pregnant best friend, Amy Liu, and her father, Mick Carmody, who’s unresponsive in nursing care after a car accident, but also to develop her case on behalf of Colcart Electric in a class action suit by Kinsale’s residents over a devastating and fatal bushfire. Witnessing a violent fight involving Luke Tyrell, whom she remembers from childhood, leads her to revisit the events of New Year’s Eve 1996, during which her other best friend, Grace Hedland, disappeared. The author tugs hard at universal human emotions as she explores themes of grief and the unreliability of memory. Readers will view everyone Eliza encounters with a blend of suspicion and sympathy. Clifford is definitely a writer to watch. [em]Agent: Clare Forster, Curtis Brown. (July) [/em]