"The Blue Hour" by Paula Hawkins

An audio book.

James Becker is the curator of the Fairburn foundation's works. He never knew his father. His mother was an artist who died from cancer when he was young. His boss is Sebastian. James' pregnant wife Helena was once engaged to Seb.

Tate Modern has contacted the Fairburn foundation because they discovered that an art piece the Tate borrowed from them contains a human bone. Becker knows a lot about the artist's work - his mother liked the artist's work too. He drives to Eris where she used to live. Vanessa Chapman, the artist, died of cancer 5 years before, leaving her work to the Fairburn foundation - a surprise because they were her enemy for a time. Grace (once the local doctor then her live-in carer) is her executor who's been slow passing on the diaries and notebooks. She lives on Eris, which is an island some of the day. She and James begin to trust each other. She tells him she helped Vanessa with a morphine overdose at the end. He tells her that Seb's mother Emmaline killed his father Douglas (Vanessa's agent). Vanessa's husband Julian once sold a work of hers to pay his gambling debts. He disappeared along with his car about 20 years before.

We learn about events partly from Vanessa's journals. Grace once saved Vanessa from a rapist.

Seb thinks that Grace is holding onto some works of art and some diaries. Grace wasn't given any art-works in the will though she was given the island and house. Maybe she's hiding evidence that would show her in a bad light?

When Julian last visited the island, he asked Vanessa for money. They slept together. Grace (who fancied beautiful Vanessa) left the house in disgust. Vanessa later left to see (and sleep with) her agent. Did Julian trash Vanessa's paintings and sculptures when he was alone in the house? No. Actually, Grace killed him when he humiliated her, then trashed some works. We learn more about Grace - how she felt rejected by her parents, then her student house-mates. After finding the arts vandalised, Vanessa told her not to return to the house because she knew too much. When Vanessa discovered she had cancer she begged Grace to come back.

James visits again. Grace gets him to stay the night, hiding his car keys. He begins to thinks that Helena and Seb are having an affair. Grace tells James that Vanessa killed Julian. James is phonGraceed and told that the bone isn't Julian's. It's from Nick, who he knows was a student friend of Grace. In a flashback we learn that Nick visited Grace pretending that after drugs/women problems he wanted to be friends with her again, but he ended up humiliating her. She hadn't planned to kill him but when the chance arose, she did. Then she kills James.

In general I liked the writing, (and how Grace gradually became the central figure, she and James having much in common), though -

• When James (his PoV) is on the phone to the Tate we learn that "the man on the phone exhaled audibly". I've seen this phrase before. It irritates me more than it should. Why is the word "audibly" there?
• About 80 mins from the end there's "reached for Grace's hand ... dropping Vanessa's hand .. the cutter between her hand" then "intent on the task at hand". Too many hands.
• Scenes are repeated from different PoVs. Fair enough, though sometimes the differences are barely worth it.

Other reviews

• Fiona Sturges
• bookliterati
• Vicky Leigh ( ‘Blue Hour’, despite being written from three different perspectives again, was much easier to follow. It feels like a two hander, between Grace and Becker.)
• Goodreads - many disappointed readers