Unforgiven

A. J. Holt

The first time Renee Lucas returns to the town of Prosper it is in a spirit of remembrance. For Prosper is where six years ago she buried her stillborn child and where Lauren, her mentally handicapped five-year-old who is now her only companion, was born. Where, at the hands of four drunken teenagers, Lauren soon, horrifyingly, is to die...

Twenty years later Renee Lucas returns to Prosper a second time, having served her sentence for the murder of her child - a crime the town of Prosper connived to see the distraught young mother convicted of. But Renee Lucas now is a very different woman from the Renee Lucas she was then. And this time it's justice she's seeking.

Review by Chrissi (250600) Rating (7/10)

Review by Chrissi
Another interesting one, this, a heroine who has had a pretty horrid set of experiences and returns to the place where her life went askew, to try to make sense of it all. Why do these people do this? Why do they have to try to lay the past to rest? Why not just try to go forward? Because then there would not be a story, I suppose.

Anyway, in the sixties, she was a hippy, and that is where all this stems from (you can imagine - the flower power, the flares, Frank Zappa and Surrealistic Pillow - need I say more?). People going back to confront the past always meet people who do not want to have these pasts dredged up. So there you are - the plot in a nutshell.

It is good, I do not want to say too much, otherwise it would not be a thriller. I enjoyed this, and that makes two by the same author. I have to say that I liked this one better than the other, but neither have been at all bad.
Chrissi (25th June 2000)