A Case to Answer

This is the fourth or fifth book I've read by Yorke, who is an absolute master at creating suspenseful situations out of the most unlikely materials -- for example, out of the rather low-key, ex-schoolteacher widow Charlotte Frost, who lives in a rather low-key bedroom community an hour out of London. Yorke's genius is in imagining the inner life of her rather commonplace heroines, and when this is done very well the outwardly dull person becomes quite interesting indeed. And unlike certain of her peers, Yorke doesn't try to make her heroines 100% loveable. A recurring theme in her work, and one that is the basis for this story, is the unintended consequences that any banal human act (or failure to act) can bring about. Hardly a new idea, but one which Yorke succeeds in bringing home without any of the glamorous trappings that a lesser author might use to lure her readers in. For this reason, she's closer to Balzac than to Crichton and the attention-deficited reader may not get the point. But Yorke proves nonetheless that suspense doesn't require the imminent end of the world to be effective; in the right hands, the most mundane events can become the material for a real page-turner.

Margaret Yorke writes a specific sort of mystery; contemporary, multi-voiced and always English, her writing is clear and painstaking, giving real life and sympathy to all her characters, not merely heroic or evil ones. This books is typical Yorke, in that she presents a family in disarray, a feckless criminal, and older people whose lives are not used up, but are disregarded in the modern rush. I find that Margaret Yorke is one of the outstanding prose stylists working today; she is the utter antithesis of poetic writers who have nothing to write about. Yorke's books are not mysteries, but novels of contemporary English life which offer much to the reader. She ought to be better known and more widely read.