Blog Tour: The Night in Question – Susan Fletcher

*I received a free copy of this book, with thanks to the author and Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*

Blurb: Florence Butterfield has lived an extraordinary life full of travel, passion and adventure. But, at eighty-seven, she suspects there are no more surprises to come her way.

Then, one midsummer’s night, something terrible happens – so strange and unexpected that Florrie is suspicious. Was this really an accident, or is she living alongside a would-be murderer?

The only clue is a magenta envelope, discarded earlier that day.

And Florrie – cheerfully independent but often overlooked – is the only person determined to uncover the truth.

As she does, Florrie finds herself looking back on her own life . . . and a long-buried secret, traced in faded scars across her knuckles, becomes ever harder to ignore.

Readers of Elizabeth is Missing, Small Pleasures or Dear Mrs Bird will love prize-winning author Susan Fletcher’s The Night in Question – an absorbing and uplifting novel with a uniquely loveable protagonist at its heart.

Technically this book is a mystery story, but it is SO much more too!

The story follows Florrie as she investigates the ‘fall’ of her care home manager which she suspects is more suspicious than the accident or suicide that has been claimed. But it also follows her in and out of the memories of different times of her life, which she revisits with the intention of sharing with her new friend… if she ever wakes up. We see Florrie in her youth and meet the six men she loved in her life, her best friend, her parents, auntie and brother. All the important figures that shaped her into the Florrie we meet for the first time in her eighties.

Dipping back and forth – out of chronological order – into Florrie’s past life and seeing the curiosity that prompts her to poke around, the defiance at being told she shouldn’t, her budding friendship with fellow puzzle-solver Stanhope Jones… every word and scene makes the reader feel that they know Florrie. You see her, really see her, as if her past selves are visibly imprinted onto the small figure in her wheelchair before us.

I was utterly bewitched by the story itself – the mystery – but then, and lastingly, by the main character, Florrie Butterfield, as she is and was. I felt that I had lived her life, thought her thoughts, felt her feelings and loved her loves.

Beautifully written – both lyrical and literary, but still eminently, easily readable – I loved this mystery story which actually held a whole life between its pages and lovingly shared it with me, with the shy, delighted confidence of a small child sharing their favourite pebble with a trusted friend.

I will, Florrie decides, speak of her, too – when the time comes. All right and proper, of course, to tell Renata of those six men in her life (a list she could chant, if asked to: Gaston, Jack, Victor, Hassan, Dougal and Teddy Silversmith); that love is the kind one finds in poetry or romance novels or in Hollywood films. But what of friendship? What of the deep, unshakeable love of friends? Isn’t that just as wonderful? And worth the same celebration? In her final hours, Pinky Topham née Underwood had turned her head on her pillow to find Florrie’s gaze and smiled slowly at her – and that smile had had everything in it, every laugh and adventure and secret, every wrong turn. What a time we’ve had – you and I. And hadn’t they? Hadn’t they had their own love story – two awkward schoolfriends, one short and one tall? Who’d tumbled through life in their own different ways but never far from each other? Like a pair of mismatched shoes with their laces tied together. Like a pair of odd socks in the wash.
So yes, Florrie will talk of friendship. She will, at some point, move those glasses of pink lemonade to one side, lean forward across the table towards Renata Green and say, Love? Magic? The proper, lasting kind? Then let me tell you all about the girl from Pepper Street.

– Susan Fletcher, The Night in Question

Purchase Link: The Night in Question on Amazon

About the author

Susan Fletcher was born in Birmingham and studied English Literature at the University of York. Whilst taking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she began her first novel, Eve Green, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award (2004) and Betty Trask Prize (2005). Since then, she has written seven novels, supplementing her writing through various roles including as a cheesemonger and a warden for an archaeological excavation site near Hadrian’s Wall. She has also been the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Worcester. She lives in Warwickshire.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alisonbarrow

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alison_is_reading

Don’t forget to check out the other blog stops on the tour for more great reviews and content (see the poster below for details)!