"Remain Silent" by Susie Steiner

An audio book. PoV switches for each chapter.

A mother (off-duty detective) sees a body hanging from a tree near Hinchingbrooke County Park. It's a Lithuanian, Lukas. It's the 3rd death of this type in 3 months, the previous 2 being thought independent suicides. He lived in Wisbech - one of the temporary immigrants who work on the farms (I've recently been to Wisbech, which has many International Shops, a Bulgarian snack bar, etc.)

The detective, Manon (46, a Cambridge degree? When she was 14 her mother died), has a toddler and a black teenage boy adopted (from a victim?). She's not getting on well with her partner Mark (who's not the toddler's father?). Nothing's going well really - longer response times to emergency calls, police leaving and not being replaced, domestic waste only collected fortnightly. She's nostalgic about Interrail and sex. She's working 3 days a week on cold cases. Her new boss, Glenda McBane (good with buzzwords but not highly rated) asks her to her office - to tell her that she's on the new case, and that her friend Harriet (a colleague) has breast cancer.

Her colleague Davey is in a relationship with Juliet that's become too stable. He fancies fun-loving colleague Rachel.

The Tuckers live next to the house where Lukas lived, as did several others (including his best friend Martis). Mrs Tucker was having an affair with young Lukas. Mr Tucker, recently unemployed, is grumpy about the noisy neighbours.

Edikas manages the casual labour. His heavies back in the workers' home town threaten families and girlfriends

Manon get a call from the hospital saying that Mark's there with acute abdomenal pains. She rushes to him and thinks about her life.

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Then there's a section (too long) about Lukas and Martis growing up, and about their first few weeks in England. Edikas exploits them.

Elise, 17, works night shifts in a filling station. She befriends the migrants who wait to be collected there at 4am. She likes the unfamiliar. Her father (ex decorator) runs the local anti-immigrant group. She creates a flyer for some of the immigrants who want to branch out into decorating. She goes out with them even though they barely speak English, has sex in a back alley, offers to lend one of them money before another of them warns her.

There's a fire at the Tuckers. Mr Tucker dies, Mrs Tucker is saved.

Davey and Rachel are sent to Lithuania. Davey learns that Rachel has 2 kids but isn't getting on sexually with her partner.

A body is found under a drive newly concreted by East Europeans. Is this followed up?

We learn more (too much?) about migrant life. Martis and Lino end up running a Frinton-on-Sea takeaway. Time seems to go at a different speed in this strand. Near the end the author attempts to explain how/why they ended up there.

Elise is pregnant. She turns against migrants. Her father want to take revenge, locking her in her bedroom. He has a friend who can do abortions.

Mark has early pancreatic cancer. She and Mark help at the birthday party of Brioni's 7 y.o. (Brioni is Manon's friend - husband Peter has just left her for a young colleague. After the party, Manon goes to Peter, telling him that a marriage is a compromise. She also tells Davey that he can't afford the dream wedding that his fiance is planning - he has to talk to her.

Manon is attracting complaints from colleagues and those she questions. She interviews Martis at the take-away. We've previously been told that there's a body in the chest-freezer, poisoned by arsenic in lasagna. Martis says that Lukas wanted to kill himself anyway. He'd wanted Martis to help him make it look like murder so that the East European underworld could be exposed. Lino offers Manon lasagna and leaves (for Heathrow we later learn). Martis tells her not to eat, just as back-up arrives. The dead body is Elise's father.

The Lithunian crime hub is broken. Manon (who notices attractive men) stays with Mark, Peter with Brioni, and Davey with his fiance though all these partnership are unhappy to some extent.

Some of the plot details are hard to believe.

Other reviews

• Jake Arnott (With multiple narratives and much internal commentary, Remain Silent can seem a bit too discursive at times. But Manon holds it all together)
• Kirkus reviews (Steiner continues the structure from her previous novels of delivering different chapters from different third-person perspectives, but while this decision adds necessary backstory, it also relegates Manon this time to a more supporting role—and in doing so, makes her feel almost like a caricature of herself)
• materialwitness (The book´s two most memorable passages come when she is administering advice first to her best friend´s cheating husband and then to her loyal DS, Davy.)
• goodreads