I Made a Mistake

Jane Corry

POPPY Page has a dependable, hard-working husband, her own successful London business, two delightful daughters and a wonderful live-in mother-in-law who helps ‘steer the ship’ through any troubled waters.

So why would Poppy risk it all when she meets up again with a dodgy but debonair old flame who brazenly ditched her over twenty years ago for another woman?

If a deliciously dark brand of domestic noir whets your reading appetite, then get your teeth into former journalist Jane Corry’s enthralling and serpentine new thriller which hooks you in from the first page and grips like a vice to the final, flabbergasting flourish.

Corry, who spent three years working as the writer-in-residence at a high security men’s prison, has revealed that this often hair-raising experience helped inspire her bestselling psychological thrillers, and there is certainly something of the night in this teasing, tantalising murder mystery. With a cast of cleverly drawn and absorbing characters and a Machiavellian plot that leaves readers guessing and second guessing from one chapter to the next, I Made a Mistake sees this skilful author at her exhilarating and entertaining best.

ON TOP FORM: Jane Corry

When Poppy Page’s aspirations to be an actress took a nosedive, she turned her talents to hiring out extras and is now the proud owner of one of London’s best and busiest agencies. But as the mother of teenagers, Melissa and Daisy, and wife to high-profile dentist Stuart, Poppy couldn’t do it without the back-up of her marvellous mother-in-law Betty.

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After the death of her husband Jock, eccentric 70-year-old Betty came to live with Poppy and the family, and it turned out to be the best move for all of them. Warm, loving, always on call, and a brilliant gran to the girls, Betty is ‘the glue’ that holds them all together.

Poppy has always believed there are two types of women in this world… those who are faithful to their husbands, and those who are not. And even though she has started to feel distanced from Stuart, who lives for his work, Poppy has never questioned which category she falls into.

But when her drop-dead handsome, charming first love, Matthew Gordon, walks back into her life after exactly 23 years and three months, she gets the same ‘ridiculously jittery’ feelings as all
those years ago, and everything changes. Seduced by his ‘dangerous fascination,’ Poppy makes a single mistake… and that mistake will be far more deadly than she could imagine because someone is going to pay for it with their life.

Corry’s riveting thriller should come with a warning to clear your diary before you start reading as the chapters weave menacingly and addictively between a murder trial and the dual narratives of Poppy and Betty.

Revealing flashbacks to Betty’s courtship and marriage to Jock in the Sixties and Seventies offer an engrossing snapshot of the social restrictions and influences of this pivotal period of change, and the lasting legacy of some long-ago events on Betty’s attitude to family life fifty years later.

But it is the consequences of disastrous mistakes made by the two generations of women – and the bond between them that goes far deeper than ‘family’ ­– which take centre stage in this superbly written and plotted thriller. Emotionally charged, expertly paced, and packed with spine-tingling suspense, I Made a Mistake sees Corry at the top of her game.

(Penguin, paperback, £7.99)