Safe as Houses (Bloodlines) [Paperback]

David is a sadist with a double life. Educated and well meaning, determined not to make the mistakes his abusive father made with him, he is devoted to his wife and infant son. Yet he has a secret, a Secret House to go to, where his women are fantasies, and the fantasies are dark. As time goes by, and more girls vanish from the streets of Edinburgh, his wife Jennifer, meek and timid, concludes that her brilliant husband is not all he seems...

Within these pages, you will find no larger-than-life Hannibal Lector figure, embodying pure evil, vile and disturbed to outrageous degrees. A large part of the genius in the work of Carol Anne Davis is that everyone, twisted or otherwise, is just a person, making mistakes, fooling themselves into the justification of evil acts. David, for all of the savagery and evil of his actions at the Secret House, wants the best for his boy, wants to support his wife, has ambitions to make the world a better place through his music. David has so many layers that reading him twists you up. He isn't a sympathetic character - nothing so simplistic. Rather, he is real in ways other writers long to achieve.

Jeanette, his wife, holds the novel together in tandem with her murderous husband. A mouse of a woman, convinced of her unworthiness next to her great, artistic husband, she takes a journey through the novel that is both liberating and joyful. As David descends into despair and depravity, she challenges her own self-subjugation, and begins a long climb upwards. With one hand, Davis shows us the misery in David's fall. With the other, she grants us the great freedom his plummet releases in Jeanette.

A warning though - the novel is emotionally exhausting, and there is no easy ending. It would be a great shame if there were, for Davis has framed two real lives in 'Safe As Houses', and to suddenly play melodrama or action thriller would be a painful way to end the novel. Instead, she concludes as she has proceeded throughout, with life, misery and wonder. Dark fiction doesn't come blacker than this, nor does it so effectively throw into relief the joys life gives us.

Carol Anne Davis is an accomplished writer, plunging the reader into the psyche of a serial killer effortlessly. Many times throughout the book I felt myself drawn to David Frate, almost wanting him to get away with the dreadful, shameful crimes he was committing. I think the main attraction of Carol Anne's books (her first novel, Shrouded, is equally spellbinding) is that she turns the everyday into something most of us daren't even contemplate. Characters, who are, on the surface, inconsequential even insipid, are, in reality, stronger, deadlier and more dangerous than we can imagine. I can't wait for her next book!

Safe As Houses really makes you think about what's going on inside ordinary-looking people's heads. It's as scary as a horror film, but much more realistic than most of them. I kept wanting to warn each new female victim that she was about to walk into David's merciless trap.

This novel is even more chilling than Shrouded. At least in Shrouded most of the women are dead before Douglas violates them. This time the sadistic David's victims are very much alive. Like Shrouded, though, this novel also has humour and realistic characters. After I finished it I kept looking at my male neighbours in a different way.

Karen Baker.