Meanwhile schoolteacher Ilse Klein and her mother Gerda are leading quiet lives in Alexandra. Having escaped oppression and fear in Leipzig before the fall of communism in East Germany, Gerda in particular is anxious they should do nothing to draw attention to themselves.
Ilse goes for a night-time swim in the local river. There she finds Serena, one of her students, giving birth, terrified and alone. She rushes her home to her mother who insists on helping the girl, hiding her and her baby from the authorities.
Otago writer Richardson has jumped about between the genres in her fiction career. She started out being literary then took up crime. It's almost as if she was putting in the groundwork for this novel which kind of fuses the two - there is the pace of a thriller matched with the thematic heft of a more literary work.
Where it falters a little is in the final third. The story is striding dynamically towards the denouement when it is interrupted with the telling of Gerda's history. This is a key part of the book but it wears its research too obviously and feels heavier-handed than the rest.
Richardson's inspiration for Swimming in the Dark came when she attended the Leipzig Book Fair and had a chance to explore the city and learn about its history. But it's when she writes about the places she knows well that the story and characters really sweep the reader along. Then it is a furious page-turner and Richardson's best work yet. Just don't read it when you're planning an early night.
