Sarah Fairbairn reviews a crime novel by an up-and-coming Walthamstow author that features a ‘revelatory’ twist
What do a cryptic crossword and a crime novel have in common? The answer is more than might at first be apparent.
Walthamstow author Sarah Lawton’s latest book, and her first crime novel, craftily mixes the real-world underbelly of illegal activity on the Isle of Wight with its more idyllic reputation for quaint cottages, wild sea swimming and tight-knit communities to deliver a gripping read where every character plays a game of hide-and-seek with the truth.
Lawton grew up on the Isle of Wight, and got to know its streets and shores so well that she can imagine the turnings of every road that she describes in the novel. This facet of the book is made even more interesting when the author reveals that she has aphantasia, a condition shared by less than 3% of the population that means she doesn’t see any images in her mind’s eye.
“I know exactly what I’m thinking of, and what it looks like,’ she says, “but I just don’t see it as a picture.” This point of difference, along with Lawton’s ADHD diagnosis, might have played into her creation of A Drowning Tide’s main character Merry, a cryptic
crossword setter whose every move – like the clues she writes for her puzzles – both conceals and reveals the truth.
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While the book inexorably moves us towards the revelation of a long-buried secret, we end the novel realising that Merry is still a mystery to us, a secret in plain sight.
Lawton tells me that Merry is based on someone from the island. “She was a metal detectorist, and she would always wear exactly the same clothes.
She had very long red hair with grey streaks. You could talk to her, but you’d never really get anything from her. “But I always base characters a little on myself, and how I might have turned out if certain things had happened to me – so she has a little bit of neurodiversity, and she doesn’t want to risk revealing herself to anyone.”
I asked the author how the idea of a crime story set on the Isle of Wight came about, when the island has a reputation for cute cafes and beach-front walks. “The island really is like that,” Lawton told me, “but there is an underbelly. The backstory is basically a true story of the drug crime that happens on the island.”
And the inclusion of cross-word clues throughout the book introduces an extra element of mystery and suspense that pulls the reader through. “They are little titbits of interest. It was fun to write, I’ve never done that before. I wrote all the clues and put them into a grid, but I had a mad panic when I was editing because I had forgotten all the answers to my own clues!”
‘A Drowning Tide’ is out now. It is published by Black & White Publishing Ltd, part of Bonnier Books UK
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