A man walks into the lounge of a married couple and brutally attacks Harry McNamara with a golf club. His wife Julie witnesses the whole thing. The attacker then hands himself into the police, still covered in blood.

So right from the beginning we know who committed the crime, the answer that we need to know is why?

This gritty psychological thriller explores the crime from three different angles. Firstly, we have the attacker, JP Carney, then on to the victim's wife Julie and finally from the perspective of Detective Sargeant Alice Moody.

Most of the characters have unlikeable personalities but they are highly believable and keep the reader guessing who can be trusted. The victim Harry is an affluent banker, charming but highly ambitious and well known in his field. Why would someone want him dead?

Then there is Julie his wife, is she hiding something and why wasn't she targeted too?

I loved this highly original psychological thriller, the pace and plotline were seamless and thought-provoking. I will be keeping my eye out for more from Jo Spain.

I stupidly let this book languish on my to read pile for months. I picked it up when I read a profile of the author and now I'm going to have to download her whole back catalogue. I don't usually enjoy tales of flawed characters, normally I like to have at least one character I can support and root for but somehow the flawed characters here are so well drawn that you want things to work out for them or at least to understand how their tragedy evolved.

The plot of this book is clever and I never knew which characters I liked to be honest!
As all good thrillers this story twists and turns but I did not see the ending coming,

The Confession by Jo Spain is a gripping contemporary psychological murder thriller that will have the reader gripped and guessing. There is a fine line between truth and lies - can you spot it?
Relationships are messy. Love is inextricably linked to hate. What do you do when the person you love is also the person you hate?
Guilt and lies make strange bedfellows. Being united in guilt is not healthy.
Secrets unite or tear apart. You may think your secret is safe but what happens when your secret leaks out?
Confession is good for the soul - but only if it's the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth - but is it?
The Confession was written from three different points of view - the victim, the murderer and the police. The reader becomes intimately acquainted with their inner most thoughts. We know who the guilty party is... or do we?
A cleverly constructed plot keeps us on tenterhooks to the very end. A marvellous offering from Jo Spain. I cannot wait to read more by her.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own

I would firstly like to thank Netgalley and Ella at @quercusbooks for allowing me to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

"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. It looks like Harry's many sins - corruption, greed and betrayal - have finally caught up with him. An hour later the intruder, JP Carney, hands himself in, confessing to the assault. The police have a victim, a suspect in custody and an eye-witness account, but Julie remains troubled. Has Carney's surrender really driven by a guilty conscience or is this confession the first calculated move in a deadly game?"

I really enjoyed this one! Completely gripping and intriguing from the very start! I found it extremely hard to put this book down!

The constant back and forth past and the present plot was written flawlessly as it told the story from Julie, JP and Detective Alice Moody's perspectives. While the the Detective's perspective didn't have a dominant role in the story, it added a brief but different take on the plot that made the story more believable. I found myself loving both Julie's and JP's chapters in this book! While JP wasn't the personality I was expecting when I read the blurb (I thought I would hate him and he'd be more cold and devious) , I thought both characters were written so well and I found myself feeling sorry for both of them in various points of the book.

With many guesses on how this book was gonna end, I was sure I was right! But I was wrong.... the ending was shocking and certainly not what I was expecting! A must read!

One of the best, in the genre.

This is a slow burn of a novel as all is eventually revealed, purely torturous and far better than I had ever imagined.

A man and a woman sit together watching TV. A second man enters the room and kills the first man. The woman remains seated... You wouldn't be crazy to think it were the start of a bad joke. The punchline? The second man had never met the other two people and he immediately confesses to the murder.

You'll just have to read this book to answer the question of 'what the hell is going on?'

You won't be disappointed: I've never read a psychological thriller quite like it.

Jo Spain takes you right in, immersing you into the characters lives. She makes it personal. Her characters are brilliantly developed, which can be something of a rarity in the genre. Usually, you find a book picks up and takes off right after an episode or in the aftermath of a breakdown. This wasn't that, Spain gives the whole story because all of it is relevant. We learn the past, present and witness the future. I particularly admired how, in doing this, Spain was nonetheless able to write with compassion and heart. You know it's a hell of a thriller when it has you feeling for the killer!

It's not an easy case, nothing is black and white. It's too simple to think it could be that easy.

I have to recommend this one, it's too good to miss. Readers, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Great story, very topical with involvement of the banking crisis and based in Ireland. High finance and the associated lifestyle and the effects it has on people of differing backgrounds. The story gradually unfolds with a very twisted conclusion. Great read.

A fantastic read. Thoroughly enjoyed this and it is not something I would usually pick up. Will look for more from this author in future.

Great book, even though you know what happens before the full reveal it was an engrossing and enjoyable read. I found this quite emotional and made you think about the morals of people. Harry was easy to dislike but so was Julie at times. A story that shows you money doesn’t mean happiness. I didn’t feel any sympathy for JP and think the story may have been intended that way. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone, it was so worth the read.

What a rollercoaster of a book! Julie is left reeling after her husband is brutally battered before her. We are not kept waiting in suspense over who did it for soon a suspect comes forward. To me, the central theme of the book is why was Julie’s husband killed? He was rich, a flirt and someone who always got his way so there were reasons he would have enemies. I liked the way this was written to draw you into the real reason behind the attack. It is cleverly written and I could clearly understand each character’s view point. To counteract some of the darkness of the other themes (for example infidelity, childhood abuse) we have the police characters who are realistically drawn. I particularly liked Alice who has a real heart in her character and I hope she will make a return in future novels. In the end, we are left musing whose confession is it really?

From the very explosive opening to the satisfying ending,this book had me gripped from start to finish. It starts with a brutal attack on a banker in front of his wife,as she watches in horror.The attacker turns himself in to the police and says there was no motive for the attack.
However ,we gradually learn all the background to the story ,as the story unfolds, told by the attacker,the wife and the detective investigating the case.It's very cleverly told,and although all the main characters are extremely unlikeable,you really want to know what will happen to them all in the end.
If you like well plotted thrillers, then I would highly recommend this one.Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for providing a review copy in return for a review which is all my own opinion.

Just finished The Confession by Jo Spain. Great thriller/mystery and murder we know 'who done it' but we don't know why,! I liked the style of writing, the book was written from the perspective of several of the main characters. Loved this book and have already sorted my next Jo Spain book.

Not the usual whodunnit but a whydunnit. Opening with the brutal beating to death of a banker in front of his wife. The killer immediately confesses to the police.
A brilliantly clever, tense and dark pacy thriller full of twists that just about manages to keep your interest to the end.

Here’s a challenge for you. A challenge for writers, and for those who like to write about writing. Begin your novel like this. Time? The present day. Scene? A comfortable room in an Irish house. Characters? A man and woman watching television, and an unknown intruder. Action? The intruder hacks the man to death in front of his horrified wife. Placement in book? The opening pages. Now, write a compelling and hypnotic novel of 400 pages which follows this dramatic beginning, and keep your readers hooked until the last paragraph.

Jo Spain not only takes on the challenge, but she meets it head on and completes it with subsequent pages of The Confession which manage to be, as night follows day, bravura, intense, full of authentic and convincing dialogue, utterly mesmerising and, in places, literally breathtaking. A countryman of Spain’s began his most famous novel with “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” She counters with:

“It’s the first spray of my husband’s blood hitting the television screen that will haunt me in the weeks to come – a perfect diagonal splash, each droplet descending like a vivid red tear.”

Now that is as fierce an opening paragraph as you will ever read. The speaker is Julie McNamara. The victim – of a perfectly timed swing with a golf club – is husband Harry, a financier who has recently fallen from grace as his empire took a huge hit in the 2008 financial crash. He is still formidably rich by most people’s standards, but his reputation as some kind of investment Midas has been destroyed. We hear the story of his rise and fall through Julie’s voice. She says, of the beginning of their love affair:

“Young, innocent, hopeful, in love. That was us at the beginning of our fairytale. But here’s the thing about fairy tales. Sometimes they’re darker than you can ever imagine.”

Jo Spain continues to defy crime fiction convention by eschewing the standard police procedural manhunt. Instead, the killer of Harry McNamara turns himself in at the nearest police station in his blood-stained clothes and announces himself as John Paul Carney. At this point, Spain introduces us to a very distinctive member of An Garda Síochána, Detective Sergeant Alice Moody:

“Gallagher’s senior detective sergeant arrived at the top of the stairs, sweat patches already forming under her armpits from the three flights, her thin mousy brown hair gleaming from the perspiration emanating from her scalp.Every time that woman took the stairs she gave a convincing performance of somebody on the verge of a heart attack.”

So DS Moody is not cut out to be a TV producer’s idea of a marketable sharp, charismatic – and stunningly sexy – detective. But she is bright. Very, very bright, as we are to discover.

The Confession unfolds like a beautiful but deadly flower opening its petals, one by one. Our narrators are the widowed Julie, Alice Moody, and JP Carney himself. A phrase here and there, a paragraph or two, an apparent revelation, and we think we know why JP Carney has bludgeoned the living daylights out of Harry McNamara. But this is Jo Spain’s skill. A page at a time, she weaves her spell and points us in the direction of the truth. Except we come to a dead end. A literary rockfall. An emphatic no-entry sign.

Of course, we get there in the end, and understand why JP Carney has exacted such an emphatic revenge on the handsome, charismatic and plausible Harry McNamara, but sometimes book reviews have to stop dead in their tracks, and say, “Trust me, this is a brilliant novel, but to tell you any more would be little short of criminal.” Yes, The Confession is a brilliant novel. Yes, I read it through in one sitting, deep into the early hours of a winter morning. Yes, I am a fan of Jo Spain (right). Yes, if you don’t get hold of your own copy of this, you will receive scant sympathy from me.

The Confession hooked me in from the first page. I struggled to put it down.
A man is attacked in front of his wife at home and the attacker then hands himself into the police. Why did he do it? Are they linked?
Great twists throughout that I loved.

Telling the reader who the murderer is in the first few pages of the book is not the usual crime-thriller approach. However it works incredibly well in this book.

Set in Ireland with the timeline varying between the early 1990s to present day, this book is not so much about who committed the murder, but why JP murdered a man he didn't know. The story is told through narration by several characters, in alternating chapters. Julie, the wife of the murdered man and only witness to the crime, initially has no idea why her husband has been beaten to death in front of her. Why is she still alive, while her husband is lying in a puddle of his own blood on the floor?

I enjoyed the style of this book. It's different from anything I've read before.

The individual voices of the characters telling the back story, then rounding off, are distinctive and easily identifiable. It's interesting to see the different backgrounds, different lives, then see how they converge, reaching that single, violent point.

I found myself particularly interested in JP - who he was and how he came to be in a situation where he found violent murder the only real alternative. I actually found Julie rather annoying, the sort of woman I doubt I could spend much time in a room with. Of course, we're only really seeing one particular aspect of her and Harry, the husband she sits and watches JP beat with a gold club.

I would recommend this book. It won't be to everyone's taste because of the multiple narrators, but it's an interesting read that's well worth the effort.

I really liked the way this book was written. A brutal home invasion, a seemingly random attack by a demented stranger in their own home, the husband beaten to near death with a golf club while the wife sits frozen in the corner and does nothing.

Couple of odd things - why did the wife do the washing. Not sure how that was relevant to the plot and a bit of a distraction. Or was that the point? The victim doesn't die - he is left with horrific damages. Again, not sure of the point, whether he lived or died. Another distraction.

Super ending though - they deserve each other. Perhaps Julies's penance should be that she is forever tied to her husband in long term care - in sickness and in health.

Late one night a strange lone man walks into the beautiful luxurious home of disgraced bank owner Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches a Shocking brutal and deadly attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear.

but only one hour later his attacker, JP Carney, hands himself in to the police and He confesses to beating Harry to death he tells the police everything but he says he doesn't know who Harry Mcnamara is or his wife he says it wasn't premeditated but is he telling the truth and if he is why did he do it? the police do not believe him that he doesn't know Harry, could it be because of one of Harry's many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal? have they court up with him at last?

or has his wife Julie got something to do with it? she has her own reasons for not wanting Harry to wake up they both have secrets that they don't want out in the open but will Julie have her husband killed to save her secret or is this really just a random attack? the truth will come out in the end it always does but who is guilty who's telling the truth and who will get away with MURDER?!

i enjoyed this book if im honest it took me a few pages to really get in to it but i did like it a lot i enjoyed how the story was told and played out i didn't know who was telling the truth i kept changing my mind every few pages and are really not sure until the very end and i loved that i could not put the book down i wanted to know what was going to happen next, there was a few times but only a few where i thought it went on a bit to long in parts i think people will love this book and it will do very well i will also read it again as i enjoyed it very much! thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy

Harry a rich corrupt financier is attacked viciously in front of his wife Julie ,by a stranger in his own home. The attacker, J.P.Carney, gives himself up to the cops confessing to the crime. He insists that the crime was a random act as he was suffering a mental breakdown at that moment.The story is then narrated from Julie , J.P Carney and Inspector Alice Moody’s viewpoint to figure out if it really was a random act of violence or a premeditated murder.

The Confession is a thoroughly entertaining , tense , gripping psychological thriller.Jo Spain does a great job weaving through the stories of some very unlikable but well developed characters to a brilliant conclusion.

I would like to thank the publishers & NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest and fair review.

The Confession by Jo Spain is a rip roaring psychological thriller with a very unique and original premise - you find out who did it on the first page and on the last page you find out why, the rest of the plot in between focuses on the unravelling of what actually happened and surrounding circumstances. It is SO difficult to find thrillers with wholly new ideas and a storyline that sets them apart from the rest but this really manages to do that. There are just so many blurbs I read that could literally be swapped out and put in the place of loads of others. No-one wants to read the same sort of thing over and over so when I come across a synopsis that makes the book sound distinct, I grab it rather swiftly.

Let me tell you, Spain did a cracking job! It is so well plotted. Just the right pace and a lot of surprising twists and turns throughout. It's a struggle to write a great review without giving away the story and I feel this is definitely one of those books that work best the less you know about them, so I won't give away any of the details for the benefit of those who haven't had the pleasure of reading this one as of yet.

This title shuns the usual formula of a lot of crime writing and does its own thing. You learn who the attacker and the victim is at the very beginning. The motive, situation, and background of the crime is what the remainder of the plot details and is done in a clever and innovative way. The story is told against the backdrop of the Irish Celtic Tiger era and the main characters, while generally dislikable due to their actions, are well portrayed, They are also realistic and believable, which always helps.

I absolutely cannot wait for more of this authors writing, I hope it isn't too long before she releases another book. It is not possible to state how compelling and engaging it is so I will just say - READ IT!!

I would like to thank Jo Spain, Quercus Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.