Bedsit Three by Sally Jenkins
Genre: Psychological Mystery
Read: 8th November, 2018
Purchase: Amazon
★★★ 3 stars
BEDSIT THREE is the first book by Sally Jenkins I've read and I must say it had a slightly different feel to it than those I normally read. I can't quite put my finger on it but I felt it still lacked something, though I don't know what.
It begins with a man burying something we could only assume was a body in the darkened backyard of Vesey Villa, a house divided into bedsits in Birmingham. Afterwhich, he then disappears into the night.
Enter Ian Wolverstone. Divorced and following his redundancy, Ian moves to Birmingham to be closer to his 7 year old son Marcus who lives with his ex-wife. Needing somewhere inexpensive until he finds work, he moves into Bedsit 3. Across the hall in Bedsit 2 is slightly unconventional mother Sandra to 7 year old Halifax, who wants to build a better life for her daughter than she had.
Ian and Sandra are from vastly different backgrounds but they soon begin to feel the electricity between them. Ian tries ignoring it as his plan is for reconciliation with his ex-wife Josephine and to be more than an alternate weekend father to Marcus. Sandra knows Ian is way out of her league but she is smitten with him and cannot ignore the spark between them and tries to impress him with colouring her hair from purple to blonde - with disasterous results.
Aside from the obvious attraction growing between them, when Ian finds a box stashed at the back of the wardrobe in his bedsit, its contents somewhat confusing, they start to believe something sinister is linked to Bedsit 3. Ian returned home one day to find a stranger trying to break into his bedsit giving a lame excuse as to his presence. It isn't long before Ian works out that this stranger is the elusive and mentally disturbed Ignatius Smith, the former resident of Bedsit Three who did a midnight flit, leaving his cardboard box of precious memories in the cupboard.
Then Ignatius makes his move. And what follows is a race to find the truth about what really happened in Bedsit Three.
Told from both Ian and Sandra's perspectives throughout as well as the disturbed thoughts of Ignatius Smith, BEDSIT THREE is a quick and fairly enjoyable read. It's not a short story but it's not a long one either, so it can be easily read in one sitting. The Prologue was compelling and extremely promising, and the entire setting of Vesey Villas was vividly described that I could almost see the bedsit rooms myself. Added to that were a couple of intriguing twists along the way.
But what let this promising read down was the confusion as to what the story was meant to be. While the main plot was meant to be a suspenseful and psychological mystery about a mentally disturbed killer with mummy issues, there was a lot of focus on the relationships between Ian and Sandra, and between Ian and his ex-wife. As someone else has said "it was like reading two different stories", and I have to agree. While other authors have managed to combine relationships with a mystery thriller and give it that real sense of one complete story, Jenkins has failed to do this here I feel. However, having said that, I still DID enjoy the book...just not as much as I could have.
I was also disappointed in the Epilogue. Really? It should have been about the discovery of the body that was left floating down a Derbyshire river or Ignatius and his mentally disturbed thoughts...not the wedding of someone I didn't even like or connect with. After all, it WAS about the mystery of Bedsit Three... Again, the confusion of just what this story was meant to be.
In all, BEDSIT THREE is a quick and enjoyable read with a compelling and dramatic plot.
It begins with a man burying something we could only assume was a body in the darkened backyard of Vesey Villa, a house divided into bedsits in Birmingham. Afterwhich, he then disappears into the night.
Enter Ian Wolverstone. Divorced and following his redundancy, Ian moves to Birmingham to be closer to his 7 year old son Marcus who lives with his ex-wife. Needing somewhere inexpensive until he finds work, he moves into Bedsit 3. Across the hall in Bedsit 2 is slightly unconventional mother Sandra to 7 year old Halifax, who wants to build a better life for her daughter than she had.
Ian and Sandra are from vastly different backgrounds but they soon begin to feel the electricity between them. Ian tries ignoring it as his plan is for reconciliation with his ex-wife Josephine and to be more than an alternate weekend father to Marcus. Sandra knows Ian is way out of her league but she is smitten with him and cannot ignore the spark between them and tries to impress him with colouring her hair from purple to blonde - with disasterous results.
Aside from the obvious attraction growing between them, when Ian finds a box stashed at the back of the wardrobe in his bedsit, its contents somewhat confusing, they start to believe something sinister is linked to Bedsit 3. Ian returned home one day to find a stranger trying to break into his bedsit giving a lame excuse as to his presence. It isn't long before Ian works out that this stranger is the elusive and mentally disturbed Ignatius Smith, the former resident of Bedsit Three who did a midnight flit, leaving his cardboard box of precious memories in the cupboard.
Then Ignatius makes his move. And what follows is a race to find the truth about what really happened in Bedsit Three.
Told from both Ian and Sandra's perspectives throughout as well as the disturbed thoughts of Ignatius Smith, BEDSIT THREE is a quick and fairly enjoyable read. It's not a short story but it's not a long one either, so it can be easily read in one sitting. The Prologue was compelling and extremely promising, and the entire setting of Vesey Villas was vividly described that I could almost see the bedsit rooms myself. Added to that were a couple of intriguing twists along the way.
But what let this promising read down was the confusion as to what the story was meant to be. While the main plot was meant to be a suspenseful and psychological mystery about a mentally disturbed killer with mummy issues, there was a lot of focus on the relationships between Ian and Sandra, and between Ian and his ex-wife. As someone else has said "it was like reading two different stories", and I have to agree. While other authors have managed to combine relationships with a mystery thriller and give it that real sense of one complete story, Jenkins has failed to do this here I feel. However, having said that, I still DID enjoy the book...just not as much as I could have.
I was also disappointed in the Epilogue. Really? It should have been about the discovery of the body that was left floating down a Derbyshire river or Ignatius and his mentally disturbed thoughts...not the wedding of someone I didn't even like or connect with. After all, it WAS about the mystery of Bedsit Three... Again, the confusion of just what this story was meant to be.
In all, BEDSIT THREE is a quick and enjoyable read with a compelling and dramatic plot.
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