Catherine Raynes: One Dark Night and The Wedding Party

One Dark Night by Hannah Richell  

He murdered her at the folly on their wedding day, left her body for the crows. They say she haunts the woods now, a girl in a white dress. 

Everyone in the small town of Thorncombe knows the tales of the haunted woods where the birds don’t sing and a girl in a white dress roams, luring people to their deaths. But when a girl is found dead the morning after Halloween, her body carefully arranged at the bottom of an old stone folly, the community is thrown into turmoil. 

Local police detective Ben Chase is assigned to the murder investigation, but when the victim is identified as a student from his teenage daughter’s school, tensions rise. Was she the victim of a party prank gone wrong, or does the girl’s death represent something more ritualistic and sinister? As the investigation unfolds and the noose tightens around Chase’s own family, the only thing anyone can be sure of is that no one is safe until this violent killer is caught. 

  

The Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath  

A bride-to-be lying to everyone. A grieving mother who can't move on. A little sister keeping secrets of her own. And a member of the wedding party who won't survive to cut the cake. 

What happened on the jetty a decade before was an accident, everyone agrees. Or do they? 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Teams podcast
from News Talks at be Right.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
If you have finished reading all the books that you
were giving for Christmas and you're looking for a new read,
Catherine Rains is with us now with some great suggestions.
Good morning, Catherine morning.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
How are you very good?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Very good?

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Happy Year you too.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
So what have you got for us today?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
So? I've got One Dark Night by Hannah Rochelle. And
this is set and this very small English vision called Salcombe,
and it's nestled in the woods and there's a private
school there and it kind of has the sort of
adventurous spirits around the woods and some stories that float around.
And because of this, on the night of Halloween, many

(00:51):
of the young people and towns sneak away from their
homes to attend the party in the woods and costumes
are worn and jokes are played and everybody's having a
good time. But then that party ends in tragedy when
the body of a teenager Sarah is found the woods
after the party, and she attended the local exclusive school,
and the investigating detective Ben Chase has a daughter in

(01:13):
the same year, level Ali and his ex wife Rachel
is the student counselor, and there's plenty of suspects from
within the school and the local community, and there's this
whole web of lies and secrets, and the police are
desperate to find the killer. And then because of his
connections as the detective, because of his connections with the school,
he gets taken off the case. And there's lots of

(01:34):
twists and turns and lots of very unlikable characters, and
that Aerie Woods and The Halloween are a really good mix.
Along with that no shortage of very questionable characters makes
a very intriguing and good thriller. Read.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh, it does sound like a good thrill. I can
kind of see that playing out in the TV show already, Catherine, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Look I can too. That kind of whole atmosphere and
Halloween sort of element to it leads itself to that.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Tell Me about the Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
This is another quite suspenseful and miss Eric thriller. And
this is set in the backdrop of an Australian seaside
town and it blends the past and the present through
these different perspectives of the characters. And Adele and Jason
are these childhood friends and have returned to their seaside
town to tie the knot. But it's not really a

(02:24):
celebration of which you kind of expect because Adele's first love, Olie,
tragically died there about twelve years ago, and his memory
as part of many of the guests' memories as well,
and among them is his mum, who's grieving and unstable,
and she adds this layer of tension am Ambiguity and
his sisters there and she takes us back in time

(02:45):
and she kind of reveals the parts of the tragic
past that the ramification through the present, and it moves
between the wedding and his death, and those alternative points
of views between Adele who's getting married and Melanie and
the present and so for Sophie in the past, and
somebody trying to savage the wedding and sabotage the wedding,

(03:05):
and lots of kind of immediate family members that are
doing some very weird things. And everybody at this wedding
has their own secrets and they don't and why they
don't want Jason and Adela Mary and she keeps finding
threatening messages and he keeps getting threatening texts and all
sorts of things start to go wrong, and that's really
just the beginning of where the Wedding Party starts. And yeah,
she's atmospheric thriller.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
She loves an ensemble cast, really doesn't she, Rebecca Heath,
it must be very prolific. Wasn't that long ago we
were talking about the summer party and the dinner party.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
No, no, it doesn't feel like that long ago. I
think she's sort of writing a book every seven or
eight months, which is pretty quick. But yeah, I like
the way that her kind of suspenseful and the atmospheric
tension that she manages to get in her novels is
very intriguing.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Oh, thanks so much, Catherine. Those two books that Catherine mentioned,
One Dark Night by Hannah Rachelle and also The Wedding
Party by Rebecca Heath.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to newstalksz'd B from nine am Saturday, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio