Out Of A Clear Sky

Sally Hinchcliffe

Those overcast dawns are the best, the truest light. There’s no false colour, no shadows or glare. People talk about the cold, hard light of day. There’s no escaping what you can see by it. There can be no confusing, in that early morning light, the truth with the wished-for reality of dreams. The body was still there. He was still dead.

Out of a Clear Skyis a disturbing psychological thriller about obsession and truth and introduces a fascinating, compelling and freshly original voice to crime fiction.

When her partner leaves her for another woman, Manda draws comfort from the hobby they once shared – bird-watching. Through this solitary pursuit, Manda finds comfort and escapes the loneliness she succumbs to, as her friendship group slips away along with her husband.

Soon she starts being stalked by David, another birdwatcher, and in distress, runs into the arms of her husband’s best friend, Tom, who is besotted by Manda.

As the harassment increases, she is forced to flee with details of her own complicated past and dark family history start to emerge.

Sally Hinchcliffe is in her thirties, and having graduated from Oxford with a First in PPE, has spent the last ten years working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. Having completed the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in 2004, she has also had various short stories published.

You can download the first 5 chapters of the book below - don't forget to tell us what you think: the best reviews will be read out on air.

Mairi-Claire Kilbride

This is the story of the six months in the life of birdwatcher Manda Brooks following the breakup of her long-term relationship.

It starts with ravens feasting on the corpse of a man, the identity of whom is not revealed, but the narrative then leads us back to this point: Manda's life seems to unravel as the unwelcome attention of a fellow birder turns sinister.

The only constant for Manda is birdwatching. Each chapter is named after a different bird with an element of the bird's behaviour echoing the theme of that particular chapter, whether it be the nature of Manda's breakup with Gareth, her troubled family history, her and her sister's feeling of rootlessness, or her increasing sense of unease as she becomes aware that she is being stalked. The structure is both clever and effective.

The author also evokes the changing seasons very well, and when the action moves to Tanzania where Manda spent her childhood you can almost feel the warmth and hear the wildlife coming off the page.

However, apart from a couple of genuinely creepy moments connected to bird feeders and enough evidence to rethink the preconception of birdwatching being a gentle, low-risk hobby, I found this novel to be short on suspense and culminated in an unsurprising and unsatisfying, rather melodramatic, denouement.

Raymond in Consett, County Durham
Enjoyed reading the opening chapters of this book, but was distracted -from about the fourth paragraph - by the overuse of the word 'I'. It's everywhere.

Ross, Edinburgh
I've just finished Out of a Clear Sky, and I was utterly bowled over by it. I don't usually read thrillers, but what surprised me was the depth of the characterisation and the quality of the writing. Some sentences were so economic in their description, I re-read them. For example, the motif of the protagonist's father's study door closing with a click - the author doesn't tell us that this means he is not to be disturbed, but her well-chosen words convey it perfectly. In many ways, the book reminded me of Enduring Love by Ian McEwan, but where the opening chapter of Enduring Love overshadows the rest of the book to the extent that the remainder is rather disappointing, the poignancy of the opening scene of Out of a Clear Sky only becomes fully apparent later on.

Marjorie Forsyth, Perth
My grand daughter told me to read this and I thought it was quite good. Keep it up. Well done!