Book Review The Venus Trap by Louise Voss one half of The Crime Warps New Years Honours Award Winners 2014 for From The Cradle by Voss & Edwards

The Venus Trap is a tense psychological thriller about a 

woman held captive in her own home by a psychopathic acquaintance from her past. 

Initially I wondered, having enjoyed Tammy Cohen’s Christmas is for Dying, which has a similar theme, not so long ago, if The Venus Trap could sustain such a tense and close relationship between captor and captive for an entire book – Within pages my worries were put to bed.

 From the start Voss delivers an intense  and well written  story that had my emotions and sympathies all over the place – The Venus Trap is Highly Recommended by me

After the first couple of chapters I was hooked, mainly because the Voss’s  characterization is so good but also because there were so many layers of story to scrape away.

Instinctively after the first couple of chapters and despite her awful predicament,  I disliked the main character Jo and felt

she would benefit from a good slap from a best friend  (after getting away from her captor of course)  Voss skilfully creates a character that appears judgemental, selfish and self -indulgent and then slowly as the plot unfolds and I learned more about her back story my opinion shifted – Jo was still self- indulgent and selfish and judgemental but now I had the reasons for her flawed character and I felt sorry for her and the hands she’d been dealt.

I loved the way Voss took us back to the 80’s through Jo’s diaries and love the way she successfully wrote Jo in two voices- that of a teenage hormonal traumatised young girl and that of a forty-some mother with ‘emotional issues’ – not an easy job, but delivered very successfully.

Our resident Psycho Claudio ( who in my humble opinion has far  too nice a name to be a psychopath- Claudio Cavelli) quickly becomes a brooding, unpredictable bundle of  vulnerability, menace and insanity.  Jo’s ambivalence to Claudio is revealing- on the one hand she fancies him and found him attractive and on the other she shudders at the thought of his polyester PJ’s and halitosis.

It’s these little gems, so casually dropped in by Voss that give the Venus Trap that edgy, unsettling, ‘keep you on your toes’ kind of feel.

Buy on Amazon kindle unlimited for FREE or in PB for £3.98

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Venus-Trap-Louise-Voss-ebook/dp/B00NAGE02A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422358316&sr=8-1&keywords=louise+voss+the+venus+trap