I was amazed to find, when I began structuring this review, that I had actually read this book 10 years ago (see my original review here) but I honestly had no recollection of it.

The main story is told by two main narrators. One is Snow Delaney who is in jail for cruelty to disabled children, and is suspected of having somehow disposed of her missing sister. Snow denies knowing anything about that, but in the the light of what we learn about what she has done to children in her foster care, how reliable is she as a narrator? The other narrator is Jack "Tap" Fawcett, a journalist who has been following the disappearance of Agnes Moore, and with whom Snow begins a correspondence when she is in jail. In the letters to Fawcett Snow fills in her back story and tries to convince him of her innocence. Fawcett is unequivocal in his belief that Snow has had something to with her sister's disappearance, but how reliable a narrator is he?

(Date discrepancy

Text in the novel says John Moore went to Oxford in 1930 at age of 20, and that he was picked for the Melbourne Olympics in athletics in 1956. That would make him 46 then. Surely he must have been at Oxford later than that? Something like 1954?

Agnes Moore met her husband John in Western Australia in 1958 when she was 17, and she was born in 1940. When she disappeared in 2009 she was 69.)

This was an interesting read, particularly the details of how Snow "managed" the "care" of 19 disabled children. It makes you wonder how much based on fact those details are. ( )

An easy read. Snow is a complex, memorable character, but not in a good way! Her justifications for her actions are totally plausible and reasonable to her, but to the reader she is an absolute sociopath with a warped sense of morality. I enjoyed it. ( )

I'd like to rate this as 3.5 as it's more than a 3 but not quite a 4. I enjoyed the book very much but found the ending just too frustratingly open-ended without some hints of what might have happened. The main character, Snow Delaney, is in prison charged with child abuse and neglect. A qualified nurse she had been fostering severely disabled children in a large house belonging to an elderly women who was a close neighbour and surrogate aunt of her partner Mark. Mark has a gambling addiction and spends most of the money Snow receives for fostering the children. When a journalist Jack Fawcett writes a story about Snow she starts to write to him from prison to tell him the 'real' story and the story unfolds slowly in a progressive series of letters.
Snow has also been implicated in the disappearance of her newly discovered sister Agnes, whose presence in the UK was only discovered when Snow's father died. Agnes travels to Australia to meet Snow but after becoming distressed at what she observes in Snow's home disappears the following morning before her flight home. Although there are some shocking revelations in the book, little more is revealed about Agnes' disappearance. Her body is never found and there is no consideration of other explanations, such as the possibility that Snow's partner could have murdered her without Snow's involvement.
The author is a journalist and I very much enjoyed her clear writing style in telling this story. The story unfolds easily and naturally and the lack of empathy displayed by Snow is quite chilling. However, I think the conclusion was a bit flat and the novel could have been more gripping in places, with a few more hints of what might have happened to Agnes. ( )

Caroline Overington writes books about the darker side of life and I have enjoyed her books so far but this one I did not like as much. The main character Snow discovers at the reading of her father's will that she has a sister Agnes that she knew nothing about and that her father has left half his money to her. Agnes says that she does not want her share of the money but comes to Australia from England to meet Snow. However she does not make it onto the plane home. At the start of the book we have Snow in prison (for what crime we do not really know) and her sister missing. Snow turns to journalist Jack Fawcett protesting her innoncence in a series of letters. It is not until the end of the book that we find out why she is in prison and the end is more, and more upsetting that what you could have imagined at the beginning. I did not like the character of Snow because I could not condone her actions, and the ending of the book was for me unsatisfying which is why I have not rated it very high. I have read reviews where people really liked it and liked the character of Snow but that was not me, so only an average rating. ( )

This book has an interesting structure: the main narration is by Jack "Tap" Fawcett, a journalist who has been following the disappearance of Agnes Moore, a British visitor to Sydney, and the trial of her sister Snow Delaney for cruelty to the disabled children in her care.

Through letters from prison to Jack, Snow recounts her life story to the point where her father dies and she discovers through the lawyer who is the executor of her estate that she has an older sister to whom she must offer half of her considerable inheritance.

The author uses world and Australian events such as "the dismissal" of Gough Whitlam in 1975 to place the novel in time. Agnes Moore, born in London in 1940, was evacuated to Australia during the war and spent her childhood in Western Australia before returning to Britain as a young woman. I did wonder at the time of reading how effective this historical setting technique would be for non- Australian readers.

Because of the recounting of Snow's life the novel takes a long time to get to the disappearance of Agnes, Snow's older sister who has come from England to Sydney to meet her. I'm not sure we really needed all that back story. Snow's life is described through her letters to Jack, and in the light of later revelations, we do have to question her reliability as a narrator.

Although an afterword tells us SISTERS OF MERCY is entirely a work of fiction, I couldn't help wondering how much of the truly horrific things that Snow Delaney does have come from cases the author has come across as a journalist.

At the end of the novel there is a set of questions for reading groups intended to help them get more out of the novel by considering some aspects and incidents in depth. I read SISTERS OF MERCY for my face to face reading group and unfortunately I'll be absent for the discussion. I'd love to be a fly on the wall because there is really plenty to talk about. It is a novel that frustrated, horrified, and captivated me all at the same time.

This is the first book I've read by this Australian author. ( )