My Grade: C
Plot / Premise
All across London, single mothers are vanishing. Margaret Hill, mother of two, walked out of her house two months before, never seen again. A month later, Carrie-Anne Morgans takes her two-year-old son for a walk in the park and disappears leaving him alone in his stroller. Lorna McCauley leaves her London flat in the early hours of the morning to buy medicine for her sick child and disappears.
Newly promoted Detective Inspector Theophilus Blackwell is assigned the case of Lorna McCauley, which, on the outside seems to be a simple case of mid-life crisis and child abandonment. Elsewhere in London, MI5 analyst, Sophia Evans, is working undercover to catch an animal rights group responsible for targeted bombings.
As her case (and her personal life) fall to pieces, she receives a strange envelope in the mail. It contains a picture of Lorna McCauley s lifeless face along with a daunting code. Now the police and MI5 are forced to work together to stop the murders, and Sophia must find her way into the terrifying mind of a serial killer
My Thoughts
I would have given this book four stars save for one thing: the whole sub-story with Marc. What was the purpose of that? I thought it detracted from the whole story. If the author wanted to give Theo and Sophia an opportunity to meet, there would have been easier, less awkward ways of doing that. I would have preferred to see the entire Marc/bombing story deleted and a blooming interest between Theo and Sophia develop throughout the story. There would have been plenty of emotional conflict given Theo’s wife’s situation. I felt like the whole Marc story was thrown in there as an afterthought and it just didn’t add anything to the story, in my opinion. In fact, it was distracting and a bit annoying, if you want the truth.
Other than than, the story was interesting and moved along nicely.
Write From Karen 