Book Review: The Silent Suspect by Nell Pattison (BSL)

Just over a year ago some friends and I set up a book club for BSL users in which we would gather, choose books to read and chat about them together. To date, most of my favourite reads have been unusual thrillers, books that grip you from start to finish, and I have been on the hunt for books relating to deafness and sign language too.

Imagine my delight when I stumbled across the writing of Nell Pattison when my Mother in Law gifted me one of her books. Pattison is a teacher who specialises in Deaf Education, working in the deaf community for over 14 years. She has written a series of best selling thrillers; The Silent House, Silent Night and Hide. The book that I reviewed – The Silent Suspect – is the third thriller she released.

All of Pattison’s books centre around main character Paige Northwood, a freelance British Sign Language interpreter. Paige often gets called up to work with the police on investigations involving deaf sign language users. In the Silent Suspect we see Paige contacted by a deaf man, Lukas, when his house is burning down and he immediately needs help.

Paige drops what she is doing to instantly support Lukas and soon discovers that his wife, Nadia, didn’t make it out of their house alive. The plot also thickens when it comes to light that Nadia had died before the fire had even taken place…!

I won’t reveal any spoilers here, for I know there will be keen readers who will enjoy discovering the twists and revelations for themselves. What I will tell you is that I thoroughly enjoyed not only the ‘whodunnit’ vibes and gripping story that kept me glued to the pages, but also the familiarity of the setting, with BSL being such a predominant feature in the story.

Pattison was able to very cleverly write in a way that clearly distinguished spoken English from signed BSL. Speech marks were used to depict only verbal dialogue, and any writing in italic indicated signed dialogue. This worked well and enabled me to read conversations smoothly whilst feeling easily able to visualise who was communicating.

I loved the fact that the lead character had a romantic story also going on with a deaf man, with a complicated and rich backstory of her own. The visual descriptions of mannerisms and communication styles used between characters was also fantastic and really brought the characters to life. It was interesting how much more animated sign language users are portrayed as and how this is written for the reader to picture in their mind.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how the story realistically conveyed the barriers that Paige faced as a sign language interpreter, for example when the emergency services wouldn’t let her through to commnicate for her deaf client and she had to fight for his rights to access.

The story also shows how Paige often feels torn between her work and her personal life, something that I know many interpreters experience when they have such intense workloads or high demands asked of them. As Paige was Lukas’ sole interpreter, she also becomes heavily involved and vulnerable, which I discovered towards the end of the story.

In addition to this, what I found to be particularly appealing about this book was the fact that it wasn’t written to be educational about BSL or interpreters, but by its very nature it was both informative for hearing readers and also hugely entertaining.

An added pleasure from this tale was also the familiar towns it mentions and cities such as Birmingham and Norfolk. Most thrillers I read are by American authors so it made a lovely change – as Nell Pattison is British and bases her stories around places mostly in England.

If you’re looking for a book to read this summer and you’re either deaf, a BSL user, an interpreter, fascinated with deaf culture, or just want to read a great thriller – I very much recommend The Silent Suspect! You won’t be disappointed!

By Rebecca A Withey

Rebecca A Withey is a writer and creative artist based in the Midlands. She fronts the  deaf sign performance group Unify and is the Assistant Editor for The Limping Chicken. Rebecca is a Deaf, bilingual BSL user passionate about music and telling stories. Find out more at www.rawithey.com