Mystery of the missing girl
SAFE by S. K. Barnett (Century €10.49)
WITH Madeleine McCann back in the headlines, this story could hardly be more topical. It opens with the return home of Jenny Kristal, who disappeared 12 years ago, aged six, on the way down the street to visit a friend.
Now she has miraculously escaped her captors — but where has she been all these years, and why has she come back now?
On the surface the answers are clear, but then doubts begin to fill the minds of her parents and her older brother Ben — as Jenny seems to have multiple identities and is intent on concealing the truth about her past.
Slowly, darker truths begin to surface. It turns out her old home may not be the safest place for the teenager.
Beautifully crafted as you would expect — Barnett is a pseudonym for an unidentified bestselling author — it piles revelation upon revelation with devastating effect, leaving the reader gasping.
If you think you can predict what’s going to happen, think again. It is that good.
THE FIRST LIE by A. J. Park (Orion €9.90)
THIS addictive legal thriller starts with ambitious, late-30s barrister Paul Reeve returning home to discover his wife, Alice, covered in blood and trembling.
She has killed a male intruder with her husband’s daggershaped letter opener. Reeve, who is on the brink of being appointed a judge at the Old Bailey, does not hesitate — he decides to cover up the crime to protect his wife, rather than risk her going on trial.
Together they bury the body in woods about 15 miles away. Then they clean the house meticulously. At first it appears they’ve got away with it — and Reeve gets his promotion.
But gradually it emerges that there’s a serial killer on the loose who is focusing on law undergraduates at Jesus
College, Cambridge — alma mater of new judge Reeve. Meanwhile, Alice is falling apart from guilt. Splendidly twisty, with a compelling inner momentum, it keeps its secrets until the final pages.
THE FLIGHT by Julie Clark (Hodder €18.60)
ECHOES of the great Patricia Highsmith are everywhere in this striking story about two women determined to escape their lives — by exchanging identities when they meet by chance at New York’s JFK airport.
Claire is married to Presidential hopeful Rory, who comes from a family as steeped in politics as the
Kennedys, but she finds it stultifying, crushing her own personality and leaving her feeling hollow.
Eva, the woman she swaps with, is a more shadowy figure who has actually been dealing drugs in San Francisco and now wants to hide behind a new identity in a new place.
They switch, but then one of the planes crashes, leaving no survivors. Claire adopts Eva’s life in the city by the Bay, but doesn’t realise what she has let herself in for.
Bristling with suspense and crammed with false clues, it would make a fine Hitchcock film with two female leads and a very modern feel.