Women’s Institute Life Magazine

‘Wicked solicitors, grubby sex and baby farming with a twist make this a gripping page turner.’


Probing the Macabre Past
by Jackie Wilkin

The abiding mystery of the things that outlive us – the cheap brooch, the Elastoplast tine with a lock of baby hair, the forks in the drawer… this is the theme of Mary Paulson-Ellis’s debut novel The Other Mrs Walker (Mantle, £12.99) That the meaning of our lives resides in things that mean nothing to our descendants, is the paradox.

Margaret Penny, lost and poor, is paid to investigate one of Edinburgh’s ‘indigent’ deaths, a person without apparent family or friends whose funeral must be paid for. What she finds sheds light on her own circumstances. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Sarah Waters and of Dickens himself – wicked solicitors, grubby sex and baby farming with a twist make this a gripping page-turner.

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