“This review of The Darkening Hour focusses on the power play between two women, an employer and her domestic worker.
Every crime novel is about power, I guess, and the extreme lengths people go to attain it. Penny Hancock’s The Darkening Hour is about what happens when one damaged person is given power over another. It’s a very timely novel about modern-slavery and exploitation, and how our own best intentions can warp and twist into something sinister.
Theodora Gentleman is a presenter on a radio station is struggling to cope with the care of her father, who has dementia, and her estranged son. She employs a Morroccan woman called Mona to look after her father, and becomes very quickly to rely on her to clean the house and to cook. But the relationship between the two women becomes increasingly toxic and Theodora’s treatment of Mona quickly becomes exploitative, with violent consequences.”
