A missing girl. A murdered friend. No one left to trust.
‘Seriously good suspense … trust me, you’ll need to know what happens’ Lee Child
‘Superb characterisation, humour and galloping plot’ Susie Steiner
‘This is that deeply satisfying thing, a strong, deft thriller with real depth’ Tana French
Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.
Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.
In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.
Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?
As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.
About the author
Lucie Whitehouse was born in Gloucestershire in 1975, read Classics at Oxford University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of The House at Midnight, the TV Book Club pick The Bed I Made and Before We Met, which was a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club pick and an ITV3 Crime Thriller selection.
@LWhitehouse5
My thoughts: Robin is a senior detective at the Met police and makes a career crashing mistake, then she returns home to Birmingham, with teen daughter Lennie in tow. Sleeping in her childhood bunk bed, with Lennie up top, trying to get to grips with her situation.
Rob goes to work for a family friend, PI Maggie, who as well as cheating husbands, helps out women in trouble. They’re on the case of a young woman who’s gone missing.
Then Rob’s best friend Corinna is killed, her house set on fire and her young son seriously injured. Corinna’s husband Josh is missing, did he do this or were they involved in something more dangerous and is there a link between the missing girl and Corinna?
Rob can’t help but dig into Corinna’s death, despite being told by the police, in the form of ex-boyfriend Samir, to stay away. It turns out she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought.
Gripping from the start, Rob’s a great protagonist, she’s smart with great instincts if a bit too impulsive. She’s good at joining the dots and digging out the smallest clues and following them, even if they don’t lead anywhere good.
This case is incredibly personal to her, involving her closest friends but ones who really have too many secrets. And despite her less than official status she’s faster and more determined than the police.
This book really does set the series up, you get to meet Rob, her family, find out her story as well as learn about what she’s done to end up in her parents’ house in her mid thirties.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 