In a pristine suburb outside of London everything and everyone is perfect … on the surface. But then one of their own – an innocent teenage girl – goes missing, and DCI Sue Fisher and her team start to investigate the secrets and lies of an interconnected web of bored housewives, cheating husbands, and disaffected teens.
Now, as the veneer of perfection starts to chip away, dark secrets rise to fell the mighty and a community is brought to its knees…
Book Info: Print length: 264 pages. Publisher: One More Chapter. Publication date: 6 July 2023
Natalie Tambini has more than thirty years’ experience as a national newspaper and magazine journalist. She created and wrote Cosmopolitan’s ‘Confessions’ columns, supplements and books, interviewed countless celebrities during nine years at TV Choice and Total TV Guide – infamously missing a slot with Julia Roberts – and helped to pioneer the ‘real-life’ writing style that exploded in magazines during the early nineties. Her work has been syndicated worldwide, and she has acted as ghostwriter for several celebrity columnists on women’s magazines.
A Buddhist, she strives to find the humanity in the killers who dominate her crime novels, and can’t wait to see where her characters take her next. Her fascination with murderers and the need to understand them stems from a childhood passion for Agatha Christie novels while growing up in Norfolk and Hampshire, and the gruesome killing of her neighbour during the eighties. She has interviewed many victims of crimes as a real-life journalist, and those who endured miscarriages of justice, including an innocent man who spent 20 years on death row. She has also spent time working for animal rights charity PETA.
Natalie is currently freelance and lives in Surrey, where her crime novels are largely set. Her eldest son, now 30, was a patient at Great Ormond Street Hospital’s neurosurgical unit for many years, and her favourite quote is by the photographer Duncan Raban: ‘Nothing else matters once you’ve been in there.’
My Review
I don’t normally comment on the books blurb/description, but feel I need to clarify a few things prior to my review. In my opinion, the blurb is completely misleading and incorrect (sorry) and I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading it based on that description. I read it because a few friends had recommended it as a twisty psychological thriller rather than a police procedural story.
So ignore the above and let me tell you about The Nail Salon. Set in an affluent area in Surrey, full of bankers’ and footballers’ wives ‘Nails by Melinda’ is where all the bored housewives of Cobshott congregate to have their nails done and gossip with salon owner Melinda.
Melinda hears everything, privy to salacious gossip and affairs, she’s the keeper of everyone’s secrets and provides a sympathetic ear whenever her over indulged clients need her.
What her clients don’t realise is that Melinda has a dark side and a rather twisted view on revenge and justice, so when a local teenager goes missing Melinda needs to cover her tracks quickly.
The story is narrated by Melinda and DCI Sue Fisher who is leading the investigation into the missing girl and has some seriously awful personal problems of her own to contend with.
At 264 pages, The Nail Salon is a quick and enjoyable psychological thriller with some great twists.
This story does have some triggers including domestic abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse and suicide.
