A Good Place to Hide a Body – Laura Marshall | Book Review | #AGoodPlaceToHideABody @laurajm8 @HodderBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n

‘Can you come round?’ Dad says tremulously.
‘Of course. Are you OK? Is it Mum?’ ‘No!’ He almost shouts it. ‘Just come quickly. The garden…the…body… we need you, Penny.’

For women of Penny’s generation, being on hand for elderly parents is just part of life. But for Penny, things have become a little more serious…

When she receives a frantic phone call from her parents one night, with express instructions NOT to call the police, Penny rushes over at once. But they haven’t had a fall. They haven’t forgotten their computer passwords. They’ve killed someone. And his body is lying in the garden, right next to the rose bushes.

Everyone is capable of murder. They just need to meet the right person.

MY THOUGHTS

My thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the tour invite and to the publisher for the copy to review via Netgalley. A Good Place to Hide a Body is pubished by Hodder & Stoughton and available in ebook, audio and hardback (4 July 2024) with the paperback to follow in January 2025.

Penny Whitlock is a mother and a daughter trying to keep all the balls in the air whilst balancing a job with the needs of her 19 year old son and also elderly parents who rely on her more and more. When her parents are struggling to pay the bills she suggests they rent out their basement annexe for extra cash, however none of them could have had any idea of what the consequences would be. What follows is a story with dark humour but ultimately a disturbing one of awful behaviour from people that you take on trust.

The book begins with a body in the garden – the reader doesn’t know who it is and I won’t spoil the moment. Suffice to say that Penny is not a natural criminal mastermind and struggles with the aftermath and responsibility. As well as supporting her parents, her husband has left her for a younger woman but still tries to use her as an agony aunt, she is struggling financially, her son appears to be suffering from the effects of addiction and, when someone pays her a little attention, to have something nice happen and to not be invisible for just a moment is too tempting to pass by.

There are characters here who will raise red flags and for much of the book I had this feeling of unease wondering what would come next. Besides Penny, her parents Sissy and Heath were probably my favourite characters, particularly Sissy with her Greenham Common background and no nonsense attitude. Penny’s dilemmas and struggles were clear to see, some of her decisions were not the wisest but made on the spur of the moment leading to a comedic element.

I very much enjoyed this well paced story where the unexpected was always around the corner. It was entertaining but also had its dark and disturbing side. It just goes to show that you never really know what people are capable of and what secrets they are keeping.

Laura Marshall is the Sunday Times top ten and Kindle No. 1 bestselling author of four psychological thrillers. Her books FRIEND REQUEST, THREE LITTLE LIES and THE ANNIVERSARY, have sold over half a million copies in the UK and been translated into twenty-five languages.

Her fourth novel MY HUSBAND’S KILLER, will be released in November 2022.

She grew up in Wiltshire, studied English at the University of Sussex and currently lives in Kent with her family.

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