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Under
A Silent Moon, Elizabeth Haynes’ latest book, differs
from her previous novels. Her other books were more stand-alone
psychological thrillers than this one, which can be classified
as a series police procedural. What makes this novel intriguing
is the way she presents the crime investigation, through the
source documents.
Readers should connect one of the team’s investigating
detectives, Sam Hollands, from the Haynes’ first book,
Into The Darkest Corner. Louisa Smith is introduced as
the formidable DCI, heading the investigation of two victims.
The first is a beautiful young woman brutally killed in her
cottage, while the second is a suspected suicide at a nearby
quarry, when her car plunged to the bottom of a pit. The investigation
takes place over the course of six days, during which it becomes
apparent that these two deaths are related.
Intertwined throughout the novel is fictional source material,
including police reports, phone messages, interviews, witness
statements, emails, forensic reports analysis documents, and
charts. This enables the reader to feel they are part of Smith’s
investigation team, collecting the clues as they attempt to
solve the crime. Even the chapter titles allow for the reader
to stay in the setting since they are named with the day,
date, and time. However, if these document sources become
a bit detailed, and they are skipped, nothing is lost in understanding
the storyline.
The author commented, “This is the book I always
wanted to write. As a police analyst I would get the real
sense of the story, the real crime, from these documents.
Investigators effectively piece together the puzzle as the
investigation unfolds. I thought I can write a novel just
from these documents with the reader being able to fill in
the gaps and can see how the story unfolds. The reader could
act like an investigator if they so chose.”
As in all her books, Haynes has a dark side to the story with
graphic sex and violence. Yet, these add to the plot as she
tries to show the dark side of humanity through affairs, sexual
encounters, jealousy, desire, and greed. The relationships
begin to overlap and a strong theme throughout is the father/daughter
relationship. Interestingly enough is that in this book the
main characters are the police not the victims or suspects.
Haynes noted to blackfive.net, “In a crime novel
there is a lot of graphic sex out there that is part of the
crime. With Into The Darkest Corner the sex scenes were very
real for me and not gratuitous. As times I wanted to stop
writing that because I wasn’t comfortable with it. It
was stomach churning for me, and gave the readers a feeling
that this is just not right. With these current scenes I wanted
to show that it was not put in for pleasure but to show how
someone could use it to manipulate and control, as part of
a power play. This is a thread running through all my books.”
Haynes also feels as a working mother she needs to balance
motherhood and professional life. For example she asked that
the interview be postponed for an hour so she could have dinner
with her ten-year-old son. She also told of another example:
being invited to speak at a crime festival on a Friday.
“I said I would do it but only on a Saturday or Sunday
because that particular Friday was my son’s class celebration
for finishing primary school. Amazingly they allowed me to
speak on the weekend so I was able to balance my career and
my family.”
Under A Silent Moon is much more of a plot-based
book than a character-based one as Haynes has written in the
past. However this novel allows the reader to analyze much
more as they are riveted to this gripping page-turner.
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