The Silent House

by Nell Pattison

[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.