Emily Rhodes

Mounting suspicion: The Fate of Mary Rose, by Caroline Blackwood, reviewed

Terror and distrust build in the Anderson family after a six-year-old girl is found murdered in a quiet Kent village

Caroline Blackwood in 1953. [Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images] 
issue 19 October 2024

‘She was dead even before I became aware of her existence.’ The menacing opening line of this gripping novel is not about the title’s Mary Rose but about another six-year-old girl, Margaret Sutton, who has been abducted, raped and murdered in the Kent woods.

The story is told from the perspective of Mary Rose’s father, Rowan Anderson, who spends most of his time in London, writing a biography of the...

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