The Girl With A Clock For A Heart by Peter Swanson

Author: Peter Swanson

Title: The Girl With A Clock For A Heart

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2014

Pages: 352

Genre: Mystery Thriller 

 

    George Foss never thought he'd see her again, but on a late August night in Boston, there she is, in his local bar, Jack's Tavern. When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl's grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece - the one who had committed suicide - was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved - and of the things she may have done to escape her past. Now, twenty years later, she's back, and she's telling George that he's the only one who can help her...

     It was only when I came to write this review that I discovered that I had already read this book back in twenty seventeen. Now this may seem like a bad thing that I had forgotten. But this is entirely normal for my brain and it does mean that from time to time I get to read a book as if I have never read it before which for me at least is a great joy. So this time around it was the word Christmas that drew me in. It is the season after all. But having read the rest of the blurb it was the thought of a good mystery that made me want to pick it up. A long-lost love and a final chance to get answers as to what had taken place back then. I mean how was I going to turn that down it ticks every box I usually look for in a book. So with all this said it was time to dive into Swanson's book and remember this book for a second time. 

     When we first come to meet George Foss he has done his best to move on from the events of his past. He is just another human trying to make it to the end of the week. But I guess we all have that one person from our past who if they walked into the bar we were in would cause us to stop and feel like someone had walked over our graves. But when it comes to Foss he really does take that to a whole new level. I mean when it involves fraud and a myriad of other crimes and just maybe a murder some people are going to cause your curiosity to go through the roof. It all felt very film Noir to me with a setup like this. The dangerous feme fetal that was always going to draw in our hero and take him down a path he knew would never lead in a good direction.  But that for me is the point, I love such stories and I greatly enjoy seeing if the hero is going to make it out alive or will I end up having the rug pulled out from under me in some brutal final stand. 

     Swanson has clearly taken stock of those authors that have come before him in crafting a more modern version of those novels from the forties and fifties. I love how there are more than a few nods to those books but it never feels overdone. It means that the book never feels like a cliche running on train tracks. Maybe in part, this is down to him not using the clipped language that is so common in the genre. And if I'm honest it would feel very jarring in a modern setting. But what we do get is the essence of these doomed tales. So as we follow our hero in his efforts to pick apart his sirens past we are witness to the lies and secrets that spill out and wash away any sense of a carefully crafted life. It's one of these tails where you can't help but think if it was happening to you, you would walk away and never look back. As a reader though, you want to keep diving in deeper and find out just how all this was going to happen.  

     The Girl With A Clock For A Heart was a modern mystery in all the best possible ways. We get to delve into the story of a man pulled into a life of crime and secrets. I would like to say against his will but that would do him an injustice. He may not have known where it was going to lead but he dove in head first in the hopes of getting answers and just maybe rekindling the love of his life. It is one of those novels that you keep turning the pages not only to see what dirty little truth is going to slip out next but also you just have to know how this house of cards is all going to come crashing down