The Orphan Choir: A Novel

Justin Clay plays loud music during a late night party with friends. Once again, Louise asks her neighbor to keep it down. Justin ridicules her, alluding to her seven-year-old son Joseph, no longer at home.

Joseph is a junior probationer in the elite boys’ choir at Savior College. Louise resents the school policy that allows families to have their children only on week-ends or holidays. When Trevor Chibnall from the city council answers Louise’s middle-of-the-night complaint, he promises an environmental health officer will visit shortly.

Patricia Jarvis is rather strange. Her walk is jerky. Her head tilts. She has a thing about mirrors. But she takes Louise’s complaints seriously, advising Louise to keep a noise diary until the next visit. When Louise starts hearing the boys’ choir at night, she persuades Stuart, her conflict-avoidance husband, to buy a home in a bucolic community where they can bring Joseph on week-ends. The music follows them. Her diary is an unsettling read. She’s clearly paranoid.

Or is she?

My only reluctance about this book was the author’s tendency to over-explain, and a protagonist so unpleasant she was hard to care about.