Back to the Coast by Saskia Noort

Once I’d decided to start reading a little more crime fiction, it could only be a matter of time before I encountered crime publishers Bitter Lemon Press. Their current lead title, and perhaps the best place to start, is Back to the Coast, a thriller by Dutch author Saskia Noort.

Although it’s her second novel to be published in English by Bitter Lemon (following The Dinner Club in 2007), Back to the Coast is actually Saskia Noort’s debut novel. (Her third, New Neighbours, has also been sold in English.) It’s a strong debut too, and not so much a whodunnit as a whosthreateningtodoit.

Maria is a young backing singer in a nightclub soul band, a mother of two children who’s trying not to think about the fact that her ambition to become a successful singer just isn’t going to happen. As the novel opens, she’s just left the no-good father of her second child and aborted his baby: before long, she’s receiving anonymous death threats. As the threats give way to cruel practical jokes, Maria begins to doubt herself and her own sanity; eventually, she decides to get out of town with the children, and go to stay with her sister in their childhood home on the coast.

A good story of any genre should try to do something else as least as well as it uncovers its plot, and the real strength of Back to the Coast is in its examination of family relationships. Maria’s conflicted upbringing of her children is very well presented, with all the complexity and ambiguity of such relationships in the real world. As she struggles between her ambitions and her responsibilities, trying to place her children in her own emotional and psychological existence, we can both empathise with her about the difficulty of her situation, and understand the criticisms made by the people around her (and those she levels against herself). Such a duality frequently exists in life but less often in fiction, and makes the story all the more convincing—and disturbing—when Maria begins to doubt her own sanity.

While the characters are often strong, the thriller aspect lags a little in the middle, and the answers to the mystery become obvious rather sooner than I think the author intended; however, the more dedicated a writer is towards depicting her characters and their relationships, the harder it is to keep secrets: five grey faces in a room may have equal chance of being a killer, but it’s a little easier to spot the unhinged member of a more distinct and vivid group of people.

Back to the Coast may lose its mystery a little too soon, but thanks to some potent characterisation and steady pacing, it’s still a strong introduction to Saskia Noort, and to Bitter Lemon Press.

Back to the Coast was published in the UK in March 2009, and in the USA in June. Noort’s second novel, The Dinner Club, was published in both countries in 2007—again by Bitter Lemon Press.