The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
London. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones.
DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and quickly sends the bag for forensic examination. The bones are those of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head many years ago.
Also inside the bag is a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up.
The clues point forward too to a brother and sister in Chicago searching for the only person who can make sense of their pasts.
Four deaths. An unsolved mystery. A family whose secrets can’t stay buried for ever . . .
Review
The Family Remains is a sequel to The Family Upstairs which continues to follow the stories of the children who were trapped in the nightmare at 16 Cheyne Walk. I have to say I was surprised when this book was released as I didn’t feel a sequel was necessary, however it seems Jewell was begged to write one by fans of the first book.
When a dead body is discovered on the roof of the house at Cheyne Walk, the police believe it may be linked to the murder/suicide that took place there twenty years before and they are desperate to trace the whereabouts of the previous occupants. Libby, who recently sold the house, is determined to keep the identity of her mother, Lucy, and her uncle, Henry, a secret but she is a poor liar and only makes things worse. Lucy and her children have been living with Henry for over two years and she is keen to buy her own house but the police investigation raises fears her darkest secrets will be discovered,
Meanwhile, Henry, obsessed with finding Phin, makes an impromptu trip to Botswana where the man has been working as a guide. However, Phin, tipped off about the visit, has already fled to Chicago where Henry goes next. Henry has already altered his appearance to look like Phin and his behaviour becomes increasingly disturbed as he follows Phin’s trail and severs all contact with Lucy. Worried about his intentions. Lucy travels to Chicago with her children under false names but the police are not far behind her.
A new character, Rachel, is introduced but her story begins a couple of years before the current events of the book but it eventually catches up. Rachel meets Michael, Lucy’s abusive ex-husband, and eventually marries him but his behaviour changes alarmingly after the wedding and she learns about his shady business dealings. A horrified Rachel soon discovers Michael is blackmailing her own father and decides to track down Lucy but gets more than she bargained for when Michael ends up dead.
Although the plot is quite twisty, it adds nothing new to the original story which felt finished to me. All of the characters do questionable things in an attempt to protect each other but they only end up making things worse to the point of ridiculousness. The police are also useless and could learn a few things from Lucy’s young son, Marco, who seems to have a no trouble tracking people.
