One Puzzling Afternoon - Emily Critchley

Mystery

Rating: 7/10

Imagine that you happened upon a mystery that you tasked yourself with solving, only to realize that the clues to its being pieced together were buried within a mind muddled by forgetfulness. Your own mind.

Edie is an eighty something year old widow who is showing signs of dementia. While in town one afternoon she spots Lucy, her childhood friend. The problem is that Lucy has been missing since they were fifteen.

Edie becomes convinced that the truth is buried within her and she is determined to get it out before her grip on her memory is lost forever. In a slow unraveling, she remembers that Lucy begged her to keep a secret, the irony being that now she doesn’t know what it was.

The author vividly writes of the encroaching effects of dementia, how our narrator often finds an awful void where once a familiar word or thought existed. Flashing back to the time in childhood before the disappearance enables to reader to feel the desperation of her deterioration alongside Edie.

A tender and unique mystery unlike anything you’ve likely read.

Book Pairing(s): Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey, The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths