If you’ve read any of Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley novels, the style of writing in Casting The First stone will be familiar to you.

My first instinct is to warn you that if there’s one book you shouldn’t read, this plodding I-don’t-what-to-call-this would be it. On second (or tenth) thoughts, maybe you’ll like it.

I’ll let you wander through my Goodreads review of this book first and we’ll continue our conversation below.

Casting the First Stone by Frances Fyfield
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Regret. That’s how I felt after reading this book. Regret that I’d read it. Regret that I’d bought it in the first place. Regret that someone somewhere thought that it was worth publishing, and in hardcover, with a misleading dust jacket, no less.

And the dust jacket is misleading. From the image of that old house by the sea, which gives one a C. J. Tudor-Stephen King feel, and a glowing review from The Times (is that The Times of London? Or what Times is that?) which leaves me wondering if the reviewer actually read the book, it says, “Frances Fyfield is an original…she writes with such persuasive beauty and emotional subtlety”. What in-the-confusing-narrative does that even mean?

Speaking of narrative, the point-of-view jumps from one character to another, often without any warning; I sometimes had to read through the previous sentence to find my place and make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

There is a lot of subtlety about the entire book, so much so that you’ll be hard pressed to find any story at all, apart from a loose plot about once-strangers-now-half-siblings reuniting. And they reunite through their so-called knack of collecting paintings which they call ‘art’.

This book is not ‘a haunting, seaswept psychological thriller’ that some (Hachette) claim it to be. It’s supposed to be a sequel to Fyfield’s previous book ‘Gold Digger’, and continues to tell the story of one Diana Porteous, a thief, who ends up marrying the old man whose house she tries to burgle.

Reading that bit there about Diana becoming Mrs Thomas Porteous after she tried to burgle his house reminded me of the 2015 American action-sci-fi film Ant-Man, where Scott Lang tries to burgle Dr Hank Pym’ house and ends up helping him and his daughter. Anyway, in ‘Casting the First Stone’, old man Porteous (Thomas) is now dead, and Di (as she’s known to her odd friends) is grieving.

Di’s character sounds rather pathetic to my ears. Okay, they all sound rather pathetic. Maybe, pathetic is not the right word, maybe false is more appropriate. Yes, they sound false to my ears. They don’t sound true at all. All of them, even Patrick, Thomas Porteous’ young grandson.

I think the story would have worked better for my taste if it was written differently. As it is, it’s like a play written in such a way that it sounds like the characters are speaking over each other.

I don’t recommend this book at all. Only read it if you got it for free from someone and you’ve run out of things to read.



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Casting The First Stone tries to be a romance, thriller, and family saga all at once. I don’t think it has succeeded at any.

While it attempts to bring a redemption like conclusion to Diana Porteous’s troubled life, it slashes open another wound, in a form of a long lost brother, but instead of suturing it close it leaves the wound wide open. And the only way you and I, the readers can know what happens next is to buy and read her next book in the limping, cold series.

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