Recently, though, some such narratives have used cheats, including sudden revelations of ghosts or ghost-writers, to allow the “I” to die. It was once an absolute rule of the genre that a first-person narrator must remain alive at the end of the story, in order to have told it. These days, there is also an extra level of tension for the reader of suspense novels. In the same way, Hitchcock might have admired the manner in which Watson contrives to have his characters out of mobile-phone contact in a major city at a crucial moment, although the director would have been sniffy about the way Julia gets into an apartment block. Two of the three major twists in Second Life would surely be seen coming by the emeritus professor of gullibility at the State University of Hoodwinking, while the third might elude even the dean of scepticism at the College of Unfoolability. Because suspense novels depend on misleading or fooling the audience, readers’ estimation of a book in the genre will depend on how successfully they are duped and, with me, the record was mixed. Being tied to the bed, handcuffs, rope.” Whatever you think of EL James, she was a woman exploring extreme female sexual fantasy, whereas Watson, more problematically, is a man doing so.īut death is always more central to the narrative than sex. The fantasies Julia pursues in the hope of luring the murderer include “being taken by force, not quite against my will, but almost.

While resemblances to Watson’s previous book and to those of generic rivals seem justified, the narrative strand featuring Julia’s internet dating feels, less happily, like an attempt to tie up the fan base of Fifty Shades of Grey as well. Julia can never be sure who she is really speaking to and neither can the reader: a name on the page may have another one behind it.

In Before I Go to Sleep, the dilemma for Christine was whether she could trust anything said to her, and Watson has found a satisfying parallel situation in the notorious unreliability of online identities. Julia sometimes tries to check on his virtual activities when she is not herself surfing dating sites, certain that she will find her sister’s killer there. Though lacking a father, the adolescent has been lucky with his stepfather, Julia’s cardiac surgeon husband, Hugh Wilding, and has just made a girlfriend online.

Julia, a professional photographer, is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, whose 14-year-old son, Connor, is actually the child of Kate, given up for adoption when she became pregnant from a fling with an unknown man. The narrative is well-travelled – the opening chapters dashing, in actuality and flashback, between London, Paris and Berlin – although Watson’s characters risk being turned away from planes and trains because they are so weighed down with baggage.

The book of spells kate brian