Sleeping Cruelty - Lynda La Plante

Lynda La Plante is perhaps best known for her writing of powerful television dramas including Prime Suspect for which she won several awards. To date, she has also written some nine best-selling novels!

Although I have watched a few of the television dramas, I have never really been tempted by any of her novels. However, on my recent birthday I was given "Sleeping Cruelty" (La Plante's seventh novel ISBN-10: 0333736532 published ...
...ready to try anything new, I started to read . . .

The book opens with a rather disquieting prologue. A sinister flashback places a young nanny isolated with two strange children rumoured to have previously set fire to their home and their mother!! A few horrific scenes (including those of a somewhat sexual nature) later, the nanny is woken by a thudding of something being dragged across the roof - the children and their dead father! ... more

Lynda La Plante is perhaps best known for her writing of powerful television dramas including Prime Suspect for which she won several awards. To date, she has also written some nine best-selling novels!

Although I have watched a few of the television dramas, I have never really been tempted by any of her novels. However, on my recent birthday I was given "Sleeping Cruelty" (La Plante's seventh novel ISBN-10: 0333736532 published on September 22nd 2000) as a present. And so, always ready to try anything new, I started to read . . .

The book opens with a rather disquieting prologue. A sinister flashback places a young nanny isolated with two strange children rumoured to have previously set fire to their home and their mother!! A few horrific scenes (including those of a somewhat sexual nature) later, the nanny is woken by a thudding of something being dragged across the roof - the children and their dead father! ""Nanny, will you help us bury him?" they asked in unison.". . .

And so ends the prologue. My first thoughts - this would make a good television drama or even a film.

The novel then jumps twenty years or so to the present day and billionaire William Benedict. The plot quickly unfolds to reveal a very complex and convoluted plan of revenge which incorporates murder, child abuse, political intrigue, insider trading, media intrusion, drugs, social bullying, torture, incest, love, betrayal - you name it, this novel has it!!

I remember reading somewhere that a sign of a good novel is its ability to persuade the reader to suspend their disbelief. If that is so, then I'm afraid "Sleeping Cruelty" did not manage its goal. The storyline was just a tad too implausible!

The pen portraits of characters on the whole were well drawn - however the sense that this was more for a television screenplay lingered somewhat. Lynda La Plant has a reputation for strong female characters- none however were present in "Sleeping Cruelty" with the major protagonists all male; the main female character is reclusive and neurotic.

None of the characters were particularly likeable and their far-fetched life styles made them rather difficult to relate to.

If you are easily shocked - "Sleeping Cruelty" may not be to your taste. There are quite a few explicit steamy scenes featuring both heterosexual and homosexual encounters. And this the censored version!!! In her acknowledgements, Lynda La Plante states that some of the sequences that were "hot-to-handle" were cut left forever to the imagination!!!

Lynda La Plante is a very able novelist, confident and unpretentious. The pace is right and the book well-structured into shortish chapters leading the reader from one character's sub-plot to the next. Despite the clever foreshadowing and laying down of clues, the mystery is kept enticingly to the very end.

The RRP of "Sleeping Cruelty" is £6.99 although is available for a wide-ranging cost - as little as 1p used from Amazon (although postage would be required).

All said, though I did quite enjoy the novel, it was easy, quick reading and is a definite page-turning captivating novel - I read it within a few days. A good holiday read! My first thoughts remain; this would make a big-money drama production and I am sure that before long will do so. 

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