I soon found myself hip-deep in the Irish social-political landscape. While the narrative voices drive the story, the DNA comprised the body of something with which I was unfamiliar. Spain falls just short of creating a parody and instead gives literary birth to a vibrant character I’m sure we’ll see in further books. At one point, Julie delightfully compares Alice’s coming like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, the water in the glass by her bedside shaking with each of Alice’s plodding treads up the stairs. Used as the skeptic, the voice of reason, and the procedural throughline to the meta-narratives of the other characters, Alice’s presence on the page has all the gravitas of Richard Adam’s Shardik or a baby Kaiju dressed in a mockery of police clothing. Both Julie and JP are incredibly essential to the central plot, but the novel shines whenever Alice Moody takes central stage. Told in multiple first-person points of view, we experience The Confession through the voices of Alice Moody, Julie McNamara, and JP Carney. Then, of course, I dove back in because I had to know why-and the story keeps you wondering why until the very end. The beginning of The Confession was so abrupt I had to step away from the book for a moment and process.
The Confession was anything but simple, but it was a refreshing change-a meta-narrative-as surprising and pleasant as thinking you had opened up a bottle of cold chardonnay only to find out it’s champagne. JP Carney walks into the home of Julie and Harry McNamara and proceeds to violently and unstoppably beat Harry to death with a golf club. Instead of a whodunit, I was given a whydunit, as there was no question about either the identity of the perpetrator or the victim.
Then, I read the prologue and all that went out the window.
I’d been reading long, complicated novels and wanted something simple and refreshing. When I decided to review The Confession by Jo Spain, it was merely because I wanted to read a simple police procedural that would take me through a crime in a well-articulated, step-by-step narrative. The Confession by Jo Spain is a gripping psychological thriller that makes you question whether the confession of a crime on the first page is driven by a guilty conscience or whether it’s a calculated move in a deadly game.
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