Publication Day: June 1, 2021
The little girl peered down the dark alleyway. She knew she wasn’t supposed to take this shortcut and her mother would kill her if she found out, but it was raining and all she wanted was to get home quickly. She stepped forward, not seeing the silent figure following her into the dark passageway…
When nine-year-old Charlotte Standish goes missing from her street in the small town of Rydale Falls, it sparks a media frenzy. Detective Morgan Brookes leads a frantic hunt for the girl, but little Charlie seems to have vanished into thin air.
Chasing up a lead at Charlie’s school, Morgan is chilled to learn that this isn’t the first time a child has gone missing on this street. Another girl disappeared fifteen years ago, and Morgan is the only one who thinks the cases could be related. But in the moment that she takes her eye off Charlie’s case to investigate the link between the two girls, another child, Macy, goes missing.
Then Morgan gets the call she was dreading, Charlie’s lifeless body has been found in a local park, lying in the shadow of a large tree. Morgan has let one girl down, but she refuses to give up on Macy. Determined to find an overlooked clue, she retraces Macy’s last steps. She’s getting close to the truth when her partner, Detective Ben Matthews, is attacked outside Morgan’s home. Is a twisted killer isolating Morgan from her team? And how long does Macy have left to live? Morgan must solve the case before more innocent lives are taken…
A nail-biting, unputdownable crime thriller that will keep you up all night, for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott, and Patricia Gibney.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
It’s always the dog walkers; we wouldn’t find most of our missing persons or dead bodies if it wasn’t for them. Poor bastards, imagine coming home from work to take Scamp out for his teatime poopsie and you find a dead girl under a tree. It’s enough to put you off ever walking the bloody dog again.
He paused in the hallway to take in the mess. ‘Blimey, Morgan, this looks like a violent crime scene, your cooking isn’t that bad.’
… whatever you do you better not leave the house without a balaclava on, you look monstrous.
My Review:
Morgan Brookes continues to be a lightning rod for trouble and I enjoy her out-of-the-box methods and good heart. This installment was nonstop activity on both the personal and professional fronts with new relationships stirring pangs of jealousy, speculation, and gossip among her coworkers. The storylines were engaging and rippling with tension, occasional hits of wry humor, and curiosity-prickling observations, yet a dearth of solid clues. This intriguing and absorbing series has been my introduction to the expertise of Helen Phifer’s crafty scribblings, and I am annoyed at myself for being so late to the party. I have a lot of catching up to do.
Helen Phifer is the #1 Bestselling crime and horror novelist of the Annie Graham, Lucy Harwin, and Beth Adams series. Helen lives in a small town in Cumbria. Surrounded by miles of coastline and only a short drive from the beautiful Lake District. She has always loved writing and reading since the days she learned how to in infant school. She loves reading books that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and make her afraid to g.o to the toilet, alone in the middle of the night. She is eternally grateful to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert, and Graham Masterton for scaring her senseless in her teenage years. Unable to find enough of the scary stories she loves to read, she decided to write her own.
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Website: https://www.helenphifer.com
I’ve not read any books in the Detective Morgan Brookes series but now definitely feel like I should. Great review.
Loving the sound of The Hiding Place.
The Hiding Place is new on my list. I haven’t read too many detective books but this sounds good 🙂 Entertaining review, as always!
I’ve been seeing this book everywhere. Sounds great. Lovely review.
Sounds both exciting and heart-wrenching!
Hehehe I feel I am on my blog 2020 when I read so many police procedural