The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

I would like to thank Viper for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Viper

Published – Out Now

Price – £12.99 hardback £4.49 Kindle ebook

This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. But you're wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it's not what you think...

The boundary between thriller and horror is often tenuous. The Silence of the Lambs has no supernatural elements but is often frightening. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House can be read as a haunted house tale but equally could be read as a mind that is shattering under extreme stress. Often in such tales it’s up to you Dear Reader to make up your mind what is going on and what is behind the story. Catriona Ward adds to these greats with The Last House on Needless Street a tale of a man and his household that will make you question your morality and your senses.

In the present-day Ted Bannerman lives on Needless Street in a house where all windows are bordered up with planks while the gardens are filled with various treats for the birds. Inside it’s messy and in many ways unchanged since he was a boy. But look closely and you’ll see an unplugged metal fridge with airholes and various child drawings in crayon. Ted struggles with the pressures of life powering through with alcohol and tablets while at the same time trying to manage his rebellious daughter Lauren and try to manage his very independent housecat Olivia and he puzzles if he should try online dating. Across the road a new neighbour Dee has arrived – she has no job and is just fixated on Ted and what goes on in his home. Several years ago, Dee had a sister Lulu who vanished on a family trip to the nearby lake and was never seen again and she believes Ted may know a lot more about what actually happened. The truth is finally to be found in this strange street.

The success of this novel is the different perspectives that Ward crafted around the central mysteries of Ted;s home and Dee’s sister. Unusually it is not focused on Dee but the strange and often disconcerting Ted Bannerman. Ted’s voice is friendly almost childlike and yet we sense Ted isn’t being 100% honest about his life. Certain words and phrases pop up while he talks to us that mean he quickly changes the subject. In some ways the traditional singly working man father trying to move on and yet we also get a sense that all is not right. His childhood was not a pleasant one and left scars physical and mental that carry hi throughout the day. His online dating profile is designed to attract women but bears little link to his own reality as even his profile picture is fake). He worries often about the Gods in the woods who may be angered by any people walking too close to their home. Despite all these warning signs that all is not adding up he strangely feels sympathetic which may be the most worrying thread of the book – we get to see the world through his eyes and as the tale widens find out Ted’s secrets.

Ward helps develop our concerns about Ted by giving us two other narrators inside this house on Needless Street. We see Lauren’s point of view which is that of a troubled young girl who has a strange love/hate relationship with her father. One-minute laughing and riding her bike through the house then perhaps trying to give him food poisoning. Watching them both is Olivia and here Ward gives us an actual cat’s view of the world! For Olivia Ted is the person who saved her when she was found as a lost kitten but increasingly, she finds his behaviour and drunkenness frustrating while Lauren too is someone that she finds difficult to trust as too keen to break the constraints of the household. Olivia’s viewpoints on humanity are both funny – cats do like to punish their owners and yet also in her comments again troubling over exactly how these family dynamics are working. How is Ted actually looking after his daughter and what is he doing when he is leaving the house and returning so worried? There is a growing sense of dread in the book about Ted that starts to unsettle you and then increasingly disturb you. As various elements of his earlier life get revealed he starts to sound alarm bells and yet you will find it hard to turn your eyes away from the next step in their various narratives as the conflict between each other grows.

Giving the tale some additional poignance is Dee. She is truly a lost soul and very much broken by Lulu’s disappearance and its subsequent impact on her remaining family as well as her own life. For Dee finding answers are key for her and she has followed every loose thread she can often at personal cost to solve Lulu’s disappearance. When we meet her in this tale she is very much on the edge and yet happy to throw herself into potential danger to find the truth. Dee is the human face on a tragedy and a reminder that crimes don’t end for the families of victims – as we see her get into Ted’s line of sight, we fear a conclusion that at least one of them will not survive.

As you can gather this story touches on dark themes of abuse and murder and the impact these can have on those left behind. It can be uncomfortable reading and finding yourself in sympathising with characters who can also be disconcerting. The genius of the story though is that this is a story about understanding the characters and their motivations. As the story reaches a powerful finale all the elements of the jigsaw come together, and you’ll marvel at how Ward from the start laid out all the clues from the start. These four central characters give us a truly standout thriller you may want to re-read very quickly afterwards to see how the storyline was created.

For me this is not a novel of twists this a novel of the mystery being explained from four very different people’s perspective and the reader trying to work out what the real truth has been. Ward has created what I think is going to be one of the most talked about thrillers this year – surprising, captivating and hard to tear yourself away from. You will be chilled; you’ll be uncomfortable, and you’ll probably want to tell everyone you know to read it. Fans of Shirley Jackson will love this. Go get your hands on this one now.