Disclaimer
“A stunning psychological thriller, . . .”
An old man’s obsession with revenge and a woman’s twenty-year-old secret combine in a psychological thriller that is both gripping and painful as one is caught between the desire to learn the secret, while at the same time dreading to know the inevitable resolution.
Catherine, a talented filmmaker of documentaries, is a woman contented with her life: Robert, a kind, wonderful husband who loves her; her son, Nicholas, who has finally moved into his own flat; and a very successful career. What woman could wish for more?
What Catherine does not wish for is the book setting on her bedside table, a book forwarded from her old home to her new one, with its disclaimer clearly stating that “Any resemblance to persons living or dead . . .”
After reading several pages, Catherine does not need the red line drawn through the disclaimer to know that the book is very much about the living and the dead. “There is no mistaking the resemblance to her. She is a key character, a main player. Names may have been changed but the details are unmistakable, even down to what she was wearing that afternoon.”
After 20 years someone has learned her secret, the secret that she has told no one, not even her husband or son, the secret no one should know except her and a dead man. Now her life, the life she has protected for so long, is about to unravel like a sweater with one loose thread that one only has to pull.
An aged, grieving widower, Stephen Brigstocke, holds that thread and he pulls it slowly according to his diabolical plan for revenge. Forced into an early retirement from his teaching position, he finally begins to dispose of his dead, wife’s belongings two years earlier. In one purse hidden away which he finds by accident contains old photographs, obscene, graphic photos of a young woman in suggestive poses. “What chewed at my heart was that I knew who had taken these pictures.”
Stephen searches further and uncovers a manuscript written by his dead wife, Nancy, in which she recounts the last days of their son, Jonathan, leading up to his death by drowning while trying to rescue a little boy. Stephen turns Nancy’s manuscript into a self-published book, one not intended for the public, but for a very small, very select readership. After all, the book is a lethal weapon aimed at a chosen target. “I knew who my target was; I had known her name for years; now I needed to reach her.”
First Stephen sends Catherine the book; then he sends her copies of the explicit photographs. Frightened and desperate to protect her secret, Catherine tries to burn the book, but Robert interrupts her. Now her husband knows there is something about the book that disturbs Catherine, but she cannot force herself to reveal what she has hidden for so long. “And she falters; she can’t do it.”
Stephen’s obsession about destroying Catherine’s life leads him to believe his dead wife, or at least her spirit, is present with him, encouraging him in his quest. “I am not alone. Nancy is with me and I have my laptop too.”
Not satisfied with Catherine’s reactions so far, Stephen moves on with his plan. He sends his book to Robert, along with copies of the photographs. He has already sent Nicholas a copy, but Catherine’s son seems oblivious to the identity of the main character, so Stephen sends the young man his own set of photographs. “She needs to suffer as I have.”
The photographs have accomplished what Stephen has desired: the destruction of Catherine’s life. Robert is horrified by the book and the photographs, and refuses to listen to Catherine’s attempts to explain that the truth is not like the book portrays. Robert has his truth: Catherine had an affair with a teenaged boy, put her son at risk, and young Jonathan Brigstocke drowned trying to save Nicholas’s life.
Once a life is destroyed by a secret revealed or an obsession for revenge, there is no putting the pieces back together. Both Catherine’s and Stephen’s lives are irrevocably changed by the choices each makes.
A stunning psychological thriller, Disclaimer by Renee Knight is an obsessive read. It is not a book to be read a chapter at a time, but one that demands to be devoured at once. However much one dreads what painful revelation is coming next, the story grips the reader and will not let go. What exactly is Catherine’s secret? Is it as Stephen Brigstocke’s book reveals, or is there more that Catherine refuses to tell?
Knight’s prose is clear, minimalist almost, yet conveys the emotions and reactions of the characters in surprising detail without the need of excess verbiage. Alternating narrators between Catherine and Stephen is very effective, more so than the few scenes told from the point of view of Robert and Nicholas. The story’s pace and the unremitting ratcheting up of suspense announce the arrival of a talented and skilled writer whose future thrillers will be anticipated with eagerness by fans of the genre.