A Tidy Ending: The latest dark comedy from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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Linda’s inner monologue is filled with insightful observations: “There are certain people who make you start to worry when they say there’s nothing to worry about. Doctors, for example, and often accountants. But especially police officers. When a police officer tells you there’s nothing to worry about, you know it’s time to be concerned” and “Because when something extraordinary happens, if you concentrate on the ordinary things instead, it stops you from having to look at it all too closely.” She must find common ground with people, and this is through things like the television show Coronation Street and will use these talking points as the basis for her answers to police, as to what she was doing and when. She has no breadth of experience, and almost everything she utters is cringeworthy. A Tidy Ending is Joanna Cannon’s third novel, after the bestselling The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, and her memoir about her time as a junior doctor, Breaking and Mending. It is a rare beast indeed: a genuinely funny, and moving, novel about a serial killer. Deliciously sinister and irresistibly tense. The creepiest, cleverest, most haunting mystery you will read all year. Absolutely brilliant.” — Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life

When Linda was young, her father did something very bad which forced Linda and her mother to leave town and start a new life. Yet as the novel’s narrative slowly and deliciously unfurls, we start to see that Linda has not only had an unsettling childhood, due to her father being alleged to have done something while he was a piano teacher, but that she also seems fixated on ensuring that she and Terry move into a very specific house. Linda seems to know what she wants and won’t rest until she gets it, and right from the start, where we realise Linda is in some kind of psychiatric ward, do we understand that this is a layered and intriguing story. Meanwhile, Terry has been keeping odd hours at work, and his tiresome qualities become more and more grating to Linda. She flips through the glossy catalogs that arrive in the mail for the house’s previous tenant, Rebecca Finch, and imagines that woman’s glamorous lifestyle. If only Linda could become friends with this Rebecca, she’d stop worrying so much about what Terry might be up to. Cannon’s version of suburbia is wonderfully creepy and claustrophobic – a curtain-twitching, darkly funny tale with a gloriously sinister twist. Linda is still tugging at my heartstrings a little, days after finishing. The Coffin ClubThe bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep delivers a “compellingly creepy” ( The Guardian, UK) novel filled with unexpected twists about mysterious murders in a quiet neighborhood. Joanna Cannon creates a world that is so real, so parochial & stifling you can feel it. Then adds in a killer. Glorious’ Jane Fallon Come on, open your eyes! Linda, like many other main characters with the “quirky” label (probably on the spectrum), has this annoying cluelessness despite the fact she seems astute sometimes. It prevented me from feeling anything for Linda.

A Tidy Ending is the first book that I have read by Joanna Cannon and I really enjoyed it. I listened to the audiobook read by Lissa Berry and her narration is superb. I highly recommend listening to this book. It also includes an interview with the author at the end, moderated by Berry.As she opens more of Rebecca Finch’s mail, she seems to become fixated on her to the point of stalking. The story gets more complicated and far-fetched. By the end, I didn’t care what happened to anyone, I just wanted to know what the point was. When Linda's mum asked where she wanted to move to, she manipulated her mum. She says that lots of people moved from her area after her dad died and hints that she overheard conversations about where the other girls were moving to. I think she heard whets Karen was going and got her mum to move to the same area. I do wonder if she killed Karen too. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. I'd thoroughly recommend A Tidy Ending to any reader who enjoys a sprinkling of dark humour in their crime-mystery-thriller reads, and equally to those who love "the mouse that roared" type plots. A Tidy Ending is the third novel by best-selling British psychiatrist and author, Joanna Cannon. The audio version is narrated by Lissa Berry and includes a chat with the author that reveals the genesis of the novel and also of a particular incident in the story. Linda and Terry Hammett have recently moved to Cavendish Avenue from another house on their estate: this one isn’t so different, but it’s where Linda wants to live. She is dismayed to find that her life hasn’t improved: she’s still working her part-time job at the charity shop; her opinionated mother still criticises her every move; and Terry still ignores her efforts to keep everything properly clean.