One of the best books I have ever read, in any genre. I seem to be in a minority on this one, but hey. I love the complexity, the moral ambiguity, the psychological depth. Nothing is simple in this book, it challenges the reader to the core.

If you are a PD James fan, I should say up front that ‘Innocent Blood’ is very different from the Adam Dalgliesh detective series. It is a psychological thriller, a slow-building mystery which starts with little steps then, as the odd details start to make sense, the tension builds. It is the story of a young woman who knows she is adopted, who exercises her right to know the names of her birth parents, and finds something she never in a million years expected.
Philippa Palfrey is 18, about to go up to Cambridge, until she decides to find out the truth of her adoption. Her birth father is dead, her mother though is still alive. Philippa’s adoptive father warns caution, tells her to do her research and think carefully before contacting her mother but Philippa, driven by the need to know who she is and where she came from, goes ahead anyway. With the arrogance and naivety of youth, she embarks on a complicated path full of moral dilemma, tragedy and loss.
It is a novel of family blood and relationships, violence, redemption, revenge and acceptance. Is there a threat, real or imagined, and where/who does that threat come from? As the story progresses, that threat advances and retreats, reforming in another shape. Is Philippa right, or should she have listened to Maurice’s warnings?
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Philippa, a cold, thoroughly unlikeable 18-year-old who was adopted at the age of 8, finds that her birth mother murdered a child who was raped by her now dead her father. None of this bothers Philippa, and she arranges to live with her mother for a couple of months after she gets out of prison. After all, she is her mother, right. They have a great time together, with Philippa intending to go to college after spending time with her mom.

All the characters in this novel are unlikeable and unbelievable. We find out what they’re like only by slogging through endless, boring descriptions in order to obtain some pertinent information here and there. Someone arranges roses and we’re told about the container the roses are put in, their smell, how people feel about them, and so on. A person walks down the street and we’re given endless unnecessary descriptions of, well, of everything.

At first I thought the characters would become interesting. But they don’t. They mostly don’t change, they don’t develop, they don’t obtain any insights. Their motives are often not clear, at least they weren’t clear to me.

The excuses made for the abominable behavior of Philippa’s mother were hard to take. The author of this novel has more empathy for the murderer than for the murdered child, who is not described in a sympathetic way.

This was a difficult book to get through.