UNCOVERING THE PERFECT MURDER
The Chalet, Catherine Cooper’s suspenseful debut thriller, has Arnie Wilson considering committing murder himself
When is a murder not a murder? Daft question, I know, but unless I’m missing something the ‘perfect’ murder in Catherine Cooper’s debut thriller, The Chalet, is a cover up for something which starts out as negligence. Criminal negligence, arguably, but intriguingly (spoiler alert!) you have to wait till very near the end of the book for the real murder to actually happen.
It’s clever stuff really, because you don’t know who the killer is, or who the ‘murder’ victim is, until late in the book. The reader is on tenterhooks all the way through the book, waiting to discover who the villain (or villainess?) actually is. Or is going to be!
The thriller’s author, Catherine Cooper, is no stranger to the French Alps – she lives in France with her husband and two teenage children and is a keen skier. This undoubtedly comes across in the narrative. You can usually tell when writers, no matter how skilful in other ways, pretend to know more about skiing than they actually do. Cooper is the real deal.
Cooper sets much of her thriller in a luxury ‘Powder Puff’ chalet, in the fictional French resort of La Madière, where the action takes place in two different time frames, 1998 and 2020.
In 1998, two young brothers who have been somewhat optimistic about their skiing skills, ski into a blizzard and disappear. “We’ve been skiing since we were kids,” one of them (Adam) had said, “and can ski just about anything” (‘a bit of an exaggeration’ we’re told.) And then the bothers are asked what sort of skiing they want, Adam says: “Something a bit extreme.” His brother Will agrees: “I’ve spent so much of this week on easy slopes with Louisa, I’m up for something challenging now.”
Their two British guides, from the chalet company and the tour operator, are irritated by their cockiness and warn Adam, shouting above the increasing wind: “This next bit’s steeper. You’ll need to take it easy. I can see you like speed. But there are two things you should know about that: it’s dangerous to go faster than is suitable for your ability and skiing accurately is much more important than skiing fast.”
To no avail, however. The brothers arrogantly disobey orders and disappear into the snowy maelstrom, leaving their guides searching for them as the weather verges on life-threatening. Despite the best efforts of the search team, only one brother survives to return to safety. Foul play? Not really. Not yet, anyway...
Twenty years later, four people connected to the (still) missing man find themselves in the same resort. As the publishing blurb informs us, one of the four knows what really happened that day. And “one is a killer-in-waiting.”
Cooper uses a fictional Daily Mail feature to bring readers up to date:
10 January 2020
A body found in the early hours of the morning in the French Alpine ski resort La Madière is believed to be that of Will Cassiobury who went missing in a skiing accident in 1998. The gruesome discovery was made by the driver of a piste-grooming machine returning from his night’s work. It is believed that the recent bad weather has caused several minor avalanches which may have dislodged the body from its original resting place.
There’s one more extremely intriguing and unexpected death to come but I won’t give the game away. When you have finished the book, there’s still a nagging doubt about the relationship between the murderer and the victim – right until and including the very last page. It’s still bothering me!
The Chalet is a slick, intriguing and suspenseful and rather raunchy thriller, complete with some rather unpleasant characters, one or two of whom I could have cheerfully murdered myself.
The Chalet by Catherine Cooper is published by Harper Collins at £7.99