When single mum Joanna hears a rumour at the school gates, she never intends to pass it on. But one casual comment leads to another and now there’s no going back . . .
Rumour has it that a notorious child killer is living under a new identity, in their sleepy little town of Flinstead-on-Sea.
Sally McGowan was just ten years old when she stabbed little Robbie Harris to death forty-eight years ago – no photos of her exist since her release as a young woman.
So who is the supposedly reformed killer who now lives among them? How dangerous can one rumour become? And how far will Joanna go to protect her loved ones from harm, when she realizes what it is she’s unleashed?
What did I think?
I've had my eye on The Rumour for a while and my inability to visit the library without coming away with a book meant that I snatched up a copy of The Rumour when I spotted it on the shelves. I was so eager to read it that I even read the opening chapters as I was travelling home on the metro.
I really enjoyed the beginning of the book; with such short chapters it's a quick and easy read so you find yourself rocketing through it at lightning pace. It's an interesting idea to see how fast a rumour spreads and the lengths that people will go to without a shred of proof. It really highlighted the mob mentality as the snowball effect of a rumour begins to pick up pace. What is so scary is that I'm sure it will have happened in real life; I mean it's not as if people are given new identities and sent off to live on a desert island. They are given a whole new life that could mean they live next door to you or me. Of course, once they have paid for their crime there's nothing wrong with that if they are a reformed character.
Joanna seems to engage her mouth before her brain and can't stop talking about and spreading the rumour that Sally McGowan, a child killer, is living with a new identity in their home town. People are determined to find out who it is and everyone comes under suspicion, everyone apart from the one person I suspected and for once, I was right! This doesn't take anything away from the book and the red herrings laid out within the story; it's not very often that I'm right but I still ended up reading late into the night as I couldn't put the book down.
The Rumour is a fabulous debut by Lesley Kara and I'm as eager to read what she writes next as I was to read her wonderfully twisty debut.
My rating:
Buy it from Amazon
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