The Silent House

by Nell Pattison

**Don’t miss the new blockbuster thriller from Nell Pattison: HIDE – coming December 2021! Available to pre-order now…**

If someone was in your house, you’d know … Wouldn’t you?

But the Hunter family are deaf, and don’t hear a thing when a shocking crime takes place in the middle of the night. Instead, they wake up to their worst nightmare: the murder of their daughter.

The police call Paige Northwood to the scene to interpret for the witnesses. They’re in shock, but Paige senses the Hunters are hiding something.

One by one, people from Paige’s community start to fall under suspicion. But who would kill a little girl?

Was it an intruder?

Or was the murderer closer to home?

This mystery will keep you up all night – perfect for fans of The Silent Patient and Cara Hunter.

‘Sinister, layered, atmospheric … I couldn’t turn the pages quickly enough’ Debbie Howells

‘A nail-biting page-turner of a thriller … The sense of a community isolated, and all the conflicts and tensions that brings, adds satisfying layers of complexity’ James Oswald

‘Delicate, brutal, impossible to put down. The Silent House is a disquieting thriller’ Ross Armstrong

‘A unique, chilling, fast-paced read that plunges you into a world of silence that has so much to say’ Deborah Masson

‘A superb innovation for the crime genre … a brilliantly terrifying premise and a twisty, gripping tale’ Philippa East

Perfect for fans of Alex Pine, Caroline Corcoran and Sue Watson!

• ISBN13: 9780008361761
• Publish Date: 5 March 2020 (first published 1 March 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: AVON, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 400
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[Leah]

The Silent House is one of those books that you start reading and you can’t quite believe no one’s thought to write a book about it before! When you think about it, a book where there’s a murder in a deaf family really does ask a lot of questions, namely, can you get away with it? (Hint: the answer will surprise you and it isn’t yes.) As soon as I heard the synopsis of the novel, I was so, so intrigued. And it was absolutely fantastic.

The Silent House is, as I said, set in the deaf community, a young girl is murdered in her bed, and her parents don’t realise until the next morning. BSL interpreter Paige Northwood is asked to interpret for the parents/police but realises a little too late that she actually knows the family involved, through her sister Anna. She keeps that quiet, however, as the case intrigues her. She starts to do some digging of her own as she knows someone is lying, she just can’t figure out how or why, but as Anna gets closer to unveiling the killer, her own life may well be at risk, too.

I absolutely loved The Silent House. The concept was new and interesting to me, as I’ve never wondered what would happen if someone was killed in a deaf family. Then there was the tension between Laura and Elisha, who both had babies to Alan, and it was Laura’s daughter who was killed while in the care of Elisha and Alan. I genuinely had no idea while I was reading who was responsible. I couldn’t really figure it out, because who WOULD kill an 18-month-old toddler? It just doesn’t make any sense. And much like Paige, I was suspicious of literally every single character we came across in the novel. Every time the police interviewed someone new, I was like IT WAS THEM! No, wait, IT WAS THEM! And repeat, about 10 times. But that just goes to show how fabulous Nell Pattison is as a writer, as it just wasn’t obvious what had happened.

I absolutely loved Paige. She was a fantastic narrator. Yes, she probably got a bit too involved, and it didn’t always help her standing with the police – especially DS Forest (who, by the way, intrigues me massively and I hope we get to understand more why she is the way she is; we got a small glimpse of it in The Silent House, but I feel like there’s more to her story as to why she is the way she is). But I could also understand that instinct to find out why, because I am that kind of person. I like to know why something has happened the way it has, and while I’m not necessarily investigating murders, I am an inherently nosey person so my investigations tend to err on the side of trying to understand why people hurt me (and usually, I end up hurting myself more in the process, it’s wild).

I’m actually super excited that this is the first novel to feature Paige Northwood, there’s a new one coming in November and I’m excited to dive in to it, I’ve already pre-ordered it and I think Nell Pattison is a fantastic writer. She really makes you care about the characters and although it took me a good few weeks to read this, I was always thinking about it every second, desperate to get back to it and unravel the mystery of Lexi’s death. It very much held my attention even when I wasn’t reading and that’s one of the best things about this book. You’re always thinking about it. I couldn’t figure out what had happened and so, I was always thinking about it, trying to figure it out. And then being desperate to get back to reading ASAP so I could see if I was right (I wasn’t, because none of my theories held any water and I just kept skipping from suspect to suspect).

This was an immense debut novel! I’m so excited to have Nell Pattison in the thriller genre. She is an incredible writer, with engaging characters and fantastic pacing and a very relateable writing style and it all adds up to a pretty immense novel, I couldn’t recommend The Silent House any more and I implore you to go and buy it – it is only 99p on Kindle at the moment

[zooloo1983]

When I read the blurb for this, it hooked me straight away. A story where someone has been murdered in a silent house, with the emphasis on silent. Why, well the family is deaf. The very idea sends chills down my spine, I couldn’t imagine being in my house and not knowing someone else was there! Goosebumps much!

With Paige leading the way in this story, she is the only hearing person in her family, so from an early age, she became a sign interpreter especially after something horrific happened in her past. She becomes the official sign interpreter on the case of a little girl who has been murdered in her father’s house when everyone was asleep. My heart did break for the family, whenever you read anything about children it always makes it that bit more difficult and uncomfortable for the reader as it is a situation you would loathe and dread to experience. What makes its worse is the silence!

I was on the edge of my seat throughout this book, such a small pool of suspects and everyone’s opinions keep wavering. I had my suspects insight from the beginning and suffice to say I was right, but the gloating didn’t last long because I really did not want to be right. When the threads start unravelling it is enough to break anyone. It was truly horrific and yes it can easily shatter the coldest of hearts.

The Silent House starts with a beginning that sucks you in leaving you just as foggy in the head like the character in the prologue. We are there thrown straight into the lion’s mouth of DI Forest, someone you don’t want to mess with, before shown glimpses of the past, counting down to the time of the murder until the past and present explode.

We have the text villains that we want to boo every time they are on the page, some proper vile characters in here that I hated! Forest, well she annoyed me quite a bit. But on the flip side, DC Singh and Max were two I quite liked. They are both trying to support Paige (and her sister Anna) while they try not to play detective. There is a lot going on this book and it is not your typical non-police playing police. Paige doesn’t want to be involved due to her extended-relationship with the family, but she is in a professional capacity. I think I would be like Paige though, curious about what is going on in the interrogations, asking for more information even though she’s not allowed it. However, she backs off and doesn’t play detective….until it starts getting personal.

This is a debut, and it’s a strong start for sure! This book did take me longer than usual to read, but I have been in a blip with reading and so I was a lot slower with this. There are a couple of times that I felt that the book could have been shortened a little but let me tell you when the suspense ramps up boy does it. So for me, they balanced each other out.

We have only been cordially welcomed into the deaf community and into Friday night deaf club and the array of people and difficulties they face. Not only as parents, friends but just generally in everyday life. We have a possible blossoming relationship and we have a couple of characters where I want some closure on. The good thing is it seems there I’ll be another story coming out..read the acknowledgements. Let us see if we might be more welcomed next time.