One Bad Thing by M.K. Hill

 

One Bad Thing by M.K. Hill

Published 3rd February 2022 by Aries, Head of Zeus.

From the cover of the book:

She thought she'd got away with it. She was wrong...

Hannah Godley is an agony aunt on a London radio show Queen of Hearts. She's warm and empathetic; a good listener. Her catchphrase is: Be kind, always. 

But when a stranger phones in to tell a tragic story about her brother who killed himself after he was the victim of a terrible prank by two people, Hannah goes cold. Because she remembers Diane's brother well. In fact, all these years later, he still haunts her dreams. All because of that one bad thing she did when she was young...

Is Diane just a sad, lonely woman looking for a friend, or does she know what Hannah did, and is looking for revenge? 

Because as Diane insinuates herself into her life and family, Hannah is going to discover that you can never truly escape that One Bad Thing you did – sooner or later, you're going to have to pay the price...

*****************

Hannah is an agony aunt on a London radio show, Queen of Hearts, dishing out advice to troubled people over the airwaves. Her catchphrase is 'Be kind, always', but it is a motto that she has not always applied to her own life - something that is about to have great significance for what follows...

Queen of Hearts has become very popular, and Hannah is now moving on up to a spot on day-time TV. On her last day at the radio show, a woman called Diane calls in, telling the tragic story of how her brother Martin was tormented by two strangers years ago - an episode from which he never recovered, causing him to eventually take his own life. It is a story that Hannah knows only too well, as she was one of the strangers involved, and this woman somehow seems to know all about what she did. Before ringing off, Diane vows to get her revenge...

From this moment the 'one bad thing' Hannah has tried to forget can no longer be ignored. Even though she is not proud of what she did, and it was the turning point in her life that made her change her ways, she would prefer that it didn't become common knowledge. She feels compelled to track down Diane to protest her innocence, but once she meets her she cannot seem to to get rid of her. Diane is there at every turn and seems to know even the most intimate details about her life. Hannah is unsettled, but she cannot decide if Diane is really out for revenge or is just lonely and looking for a friend, until things start to go seriously awry. She is relutantly forced to turn to someone from her past for help - someone she really did not want to see again...

One Bad Thing is a deliciously creepy psychological thriller about how ill-judged episodes from our youth can come back to haunt us. 

Hannah is, for all intents and purposes, a very respectable wife, mother and professional agony aunt, dolling out advice to those who need a bit of extra help. But the veneer of her current respectability covers up the troubled young woman she used to be - the woman who drank too much and often stepped outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour to make herself feel something. It's a life she left behind when the traumatic event with Martin made her realise that things had gone too far and she didn't like who she had become.

The story is told in two timelines, moving back and forth from the past when the 'one bad thing' happened, and the present as Hannah's life goes into freefall. We only very gradually learn what the bad thing was and who was involved, which builds suspense nicely, and all the while the tension in the present ramps up notch by notch as the mayhem plays out. This is a plot full of glorious threads of secrets, deception, jealousy, and obsession, with some skillful misdirection that allows Hill to toy with your perception time and time again, until all the twists, turns and shocking revelations leave you feeling breathless.

Hill touches on some poignant themes about family dynamics, mental health, loneliness, and the treatment of the vulnerable which are really affecting, but I think this book also asks an interesting question about what actually makes someone an ideal 'agony aunt'. What qualities and experience should they have? And do they always have to be paragons of virtue? Something to ponder in your quieter moments...

I read this book in a single, highly entertaining sitting, with my heart in my mouth for almost the entire time. It's perfectly pitched, unnerving, and totally absorbing - and would make a cracking TV drama!

One Bad Thing is available to buy now in hardback, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

About the author:

M.K. Hill was a journalist and an award-winning music radio producer before becoming a full-time writer. The first novel in the Sasha Dawson series, The Bad Place, was described as 'everything a police procedural should be' by The Times, who also named it as their crime book of the month. He lives in London.