Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear.

Just an hour later the attacker, JP Carney, has handed himself in to the police. He confesses to beating Harry to death, but JP claims that the assault was not premeditated and that he didn’t know the identity of his victim. With a man as notorious as Harry McNamara, the detectives cannot help wondering, was this really a random act of violence or is it linked to one of Harry’s many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal?

This gripping psychological thriller will have you questioning, who – of Harry, Julie and JP – is really the guilty one? And is Carney’s surrender driven by a guilty conscience or is his confession a calculated move in a deadly game?

The Confession is a stand-alone thriller from Jo Spain, author of the popular Inspector Tom Reynolds series, and hopefully, we’ll get a lot more!
 
Disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie are sitting watching a crime drama on TV in their ill-gotten mansion when an unknown man walks in and begins to beat Harry with a golf club. Julie can’t believe what is happening &  watches in horror,  unable to respond to the surreal events going on around her.

We learn that the attacker – JP Carney – has handed himself into the police immediately, saying he has had some kind of mental episode and doesn’t know Harry, or even why he attacked him. The Police aren’t sure that there isn’t a closer connection between the two men, but with Harry on life support, there isn’t a great deal they can do to disprove JP’s version of events.
 
We then go on a journey through the seemingly normal lives of our protagonists – Bank CEO Harry and Julie, making moves through the celebrity circles of Ireland thanks to the profits made before people figured out what the bankers were really up to. On the other side of the coin, JP, barely more than a child himself is bringing up his sister Charlene thanks to his absent, mentally unstable mother, and alcoholic father.
 
I liked the concept of knowing who committed the crime from the start, so the mystery is ‘why’ rather than ‘who’. There is lot of focus on the characters and their personal relationships – how this shapes the way the story unfolds is done really, really well and gives it credibility. I don’t know what it is about this book, but there is definitely something about it that makes it quite captivating, and gives it a bit of an edge on other novels I’ve read recently.
 
4.5 stars