THE Reading room
Suspense
Sheerwater by Leah Swann, Fourth Estate
The opening scene of this gripping domestic suspense thriller is heart stopping. Mum Ava is driving with her two young sons, Max and Teddy, and their dog, along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road when they literally see “a bolt from the blue”. It streaks across the sky ahead and quickly they realise a plane has crashed. Should she stop? There’s something desperate and urgent about Ava. She really doesn’t want to punctuate her family road trip and we sense an electric atmosphere of fear driving her heightened state and yet she feels compelled to do something. The people inside the plane need her help, there is no one else around and she can’t just drive on by. So, even though she’s clearly conflicted, Ava pulls up at a safe distance, instructs