Second Sight by Aoife Clifford

Publisher's Synopsis

Eliza Carmody returns home to the country to work on the biggest law case of her career. The only problem is this time she’s on the ‘wrong side’ – defending a large corporation against a bushfire class action by her hometown of Kinsale.

On her first day back Eliza witnesses an old friend, Luke Tyrell, commit an act of lethal violence. As the police investigate that crime and hunt for Luke they uncover bones at The Castle, a historic homestead in the district. Eliza is convinced that they belong to someone from her past.

As Eliza becomes more and more entangled in the investigation, she is pulled back into her memories of youthful friendships and begins to question everyone she knows … and everything she once thought was true.

Review of Second Sight by Aoife Clifford

A small town with a troubling history that’s full of secrets and devastating consequences lies at the forefront of this brilliantly conceived and executed mystery. Aoife Clifford’s second novel is as compelling as it is heartbreaking, with events spanning more than 20 years creating a pervading feeling of guilt and profound remorse. 

Returning to her home town of Kinsale in Victoria, Eliza witnesses a minor bingle that quickly escalates into a fight with one man winding up knocked out on the ground, fighting for life. The victim is unknown to her, just a man wearing a distinctive green felt hat, but she happens to know the man who threw the devastating punch. In fact, she knows that man very well having shared a moment with him many years before.

As tragic as the one-punch incident is, it sparks off memories from more than 20 years ago when she was a brash 16 year old, sneaking off to a New Year’s Eve party that ended badly. By the end of the night she will have embarrassed herself in front of her friends and seen one of them for the last time. She’s still, to this day, unsure exactly what happened to Grace Hedland.

The focus of the story switches alternately between the present events and that day 20 years earlier. Eliza works to try to piece together what happened back then, part of which seems linked to a car accident that has left her father, the former police chief, in a vegetative state. Meanwhile, that New Year’s Eve plays out for us to get a picture of what happened as the clock clicked over to midnight and then beyond.

As Eliza moves around town, one thing becomes clear, all the main players from 20-odd years ago are still living in this small town. The other is that everyone seems to know everyone else and are connected to them in some way. The friends with whom Eliza had partied on that fateful night are there to quiz today and they each have vital pieces of information to tell that helps to slowly put together that night.

What this also means is that those responsible are still lurking around and they’re not going to appreciate someone returning to Kinsale and bringing up the past.

It’s important to take note of every little confrontation in the book because everything and everyone is connected. Even the punch in the opening scene turns out to be significant, resulting in ramifications that will be felt throughout the book. 

As well as being a wonderfully complex mystery, Second Sight provides an outstanding depiction of the small town dynamic complete with long held grudges and carefully buried memories. We’re carefully led down a number of seemingly obvious paths only to find that they’re blind alleys and I found it necessary on more than one occasion to readjust my thinking as I tried to guess the guilty party. Just the way a good mystery should work.