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A Novel
by Rebecca Frayn
How well can a mother ever really know her child?
Julian and Annie have only just announced their forthcoming marriage when Annie's twelve-year-old son, Dan, fails to come home from school. Despite an extensive police investigation, the days turn into weeks and it is as if Dan has vanished into thin air.
Over the next three years Annie refuses to give up hope that somewhere her son is alive and will one day return home. Julian, meanwhile, can't help but yearn for Annie to put the past behind her and move on. Then, out of the blue, a call brings shocking news of Dan's fate. And far from being over, it seems the mystery of his disappearance is only just beginning.
In spare, searing prose, Deceptions addresses our simultaneous need for - and wariness of - human connection and the extremes that we are driven to by these competing impulses. Marking British literary star Rebecca Frayn's arrival in the United States, this is fiction at its riveting best.
"Starred Review. Frayn manages to take what could be a trite setup and imbue it with genuine depth. Her plotting skills and insights into human nature will evoke deserved comparisons to authors like Laura Lippman and Ruth Rendell. " - Publishers Weekly
"The depiction of a mother completely undone by grief for her missing child is just one of the emotionally harrowing character portraits that Frayn delivers in this psychological thriller that will leave readers guessing until the very end." - Booklist
"Inspired by the true story of a missing child, Nicholas Barclay, such a dark tale reminds us that truth is often stranger than fiction. This will appeal to fans of mystery and psychological suspense." - Library Journal
"Annie and Julian's relationship is sharply drawn, but despite a startling revelation, the book's second half lets the reader down with plot loopholes and unanswered questions." - Kirkus Reviews
"Several hundred cuts above the rest; not another mawkish wallow, but a compulsive thriller with echoes of Ruth Rendell and Josephine Tey. Superb." - The Times (UK)
"Great psychological insight lies at the heart of this disturbing, gripping story." - Daily Mirror (UK)
"This is a book that grabs you in the opening pages and will prove very difficult to put down. The terrible desolation, the wreckage, the lurches of hope, the unraveling of an unhappy person's hold on reality: all these are analysed with a devastating but compassionate precision." - Reader's Digest
This information about Deceptions was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rebecca Frayn is a film maker, screen writer and novelist, and she is the daughter of British playwright, Michael Frayn. Over the years she has directed a wide range of signature documentaries for Cutting Edge, Modern Times, The South Bank Show and Imagine, and an original three-part series Space for the BBC. Her first novel One Life was published in 2007 by Gardners Books. She lives in London with her husband and children.
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