Forbidden Fruit by Ilsa Evans
Set in Australia, the partner swapping and swinging seventies prove quite unsettling when you find out that it was your parents that were involved in those activities. Just who was involved with whom? And how many ‘whoms’? And of what gender?
It’s bad enough to think of your parents having sex but to know that they went to parties where keys were thrown into a bowl is really unnerving. Especially in a small town where you are bound to know all of the people involved. You certainly would look at your elders in your community in a different light.
And then a murder is discovered. And your father is arrested. A cut and dried case according to the police, but you don’t quite believe it, despite his sexual history, so you investigate for yourself and dig up a lot more than bones in your back yard.
Amateur detectives often find more than they bargained for when they start investigating, especially close to home, and so it is here.
The book is not a taut suspense novel but nonetheless is written in a slightly chatty style that permits the reader to imagine the story being spoken. Using the first person gives the author the opportunities to add embellishments and so the text is reminiscent of a women’s magazine – which the narrator appears to work for anyway.3 *
The Bouncing Tigger Reads 