Family feud

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2022 (1148 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re looking for a page-turner to read on your summer vacation, British author Lisa Jewell’s thriller, The Family Remains, fits the bill.

Jewell wrote The Family Remains after being asked by her fans to write a sequel to The Family Upstairs, published in 2019. Jewell is the number one New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels which have sold over five million copies internationally and been translated into 28 languages.

A pro in terms of knowing how to take readers along a twisting path, Jewell keeps the action moving and surprises coming quickly throughout The Family Remains.

Like many thrillers and mysteries, the book opens with the discovery of a body — in this case, a garbage bag filled with bones that lands on the muddy bank of the Thames River. Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu is immediately intrigued and resolves to discover the skeleton’s identity and figure out who is responsible for causing the fatal skull fracture.

Adding to the body count, Rachel Rimmer is awakened by a phone call from a French police officer who informs her that the body of her estranged husband, Michael, has been discovered in his house in Antibes, and it looks like he was fatally stabbed a few days earlier. Rather than sobbing with grief, Rachel seems to be unsurprised by the news and goes back to sleep.

It transpires that the handsome and charming Michael was involved in the international drug trade, so suspicion relating to his murder falls on his business associates. However, despite his initially engaging manner, both his first and second wives found he was vicious and capable of sexual violence, which he later denied having committed.

Jewell introduces 42-year-old Henry Lamb, a seemingly successful gay bachelor with a dark past. His younger sister Lucy and her son and daughter are temporarily living with him in his upscale London apartment — an arrangement he’s not very happy with. Lucy is Michael’s first wife. Since their divorce, she’s struggled to raise her children and the family has occasionally been homeless. Henry and Lucy’s wealthy parents died by suicide years earlier after falling under the spell of an evil con man who masqueraded as a healer. The siblings escaped from the house and the country, but Lucy left her 10-month-old baby daughter, now named Libby, behind.

Recently reunited with Libby, Lucy wants her daughter to meet her father, Phineas (Phin) Thomsen. Phin is the son of the con man who mesmerized the Lambs, and he was just 16 and Lucy 14 when their daughter was born. Phin fled England and is working at a lodge in Botswana, as Libby’s journalist boyfriend discovers. As Libby and her boyfriend make plans to pay Phin a surprise visit, they find that he’s disappeared.

Henry has been obsessed with Phin since their teen years when they were held prisoner inside the elegant mansion that the Lambs owned. In fact, Henry’s had cosmetic surgery to change his facial features to resemble the handsome Phin.

Henry finds out that Phin might be visiting family in Chicago, so he makes travel arrangements without telling his family. It appears Henry wants to locate Phin to achieve some sort of personal resolution, but the nature of his motives — whether good or evil — remains unknown.

Worried about what her brother has in store for Phin, Lucy and her younger children also make the trip to Chicago, where they try to track Henry down before he finds Phin.

While the Lamb family’s sordid history is slowly being revealed, D.I. Owusu is uncovering the mystery of the skeleton — a small woman killed over 20 years earlier. Eventually he’s able to identify the body as that of Bridget Dunlop-Evers, a musician who lived in the Lambs’ mansion.

With many balls in the air, Jewell’s skill as a novelist comes into play, as she manages to land each one successfully. As a sequel, The Family Remains doesn’t answer all the questions readers might have about why Henry, Lucy and Phin were subjected to inhumane living conditions when teens. However, the answers can be found in The Family Upstairs, so add that book to your summertime reading list.

Andrea Geary is a freelance writer living in Winnipeg.