Michael Robotham has written another brilliant suspenseful psychological crime thriller about two missing girls that disappeared over three years ago, did they run away or did something criminal happen to them. The story is told from two mode of narration perspectives, bringing you from where the missing girls are and what the authorities are doing to try to solve this mystery. The style that he writes in keeps the reader guessing upon the outcome, but never really getting there till the final pages are read. Two teenage girls plan to runaway but are taken and are gone for three years. We hear directly from one of the girls as she narrates her life in captivity and, alternately from a psychologist with family and health problems who is asked to help with the investigation. This is my first Michael Robotham book and I am certainly going to seek out others in this series. The rest of the novel was pretty good, though. Piper's chapters were really creepy and I found myself having a hard time reading this book alone in the dark, particularly as it got closer to the end. I thought that the character development between the minor characters in the book specifically the parents of Piper and Tash and their friends from the town was interesting and very well done. We learned a lot about each of them, which made pinpointing who the kidnapper was going to be even harder. The topic of abduction and keeping young girls prisoner for years in dank basements seems to have grown in popularity amongst crime writers and their audiences, undoubtedly fuelled by real-life events covered in the news in recent years. It is hard not to be deeply affected by events like the Natascha Kampusch imprisonment, for example, especially the fact that an unspeakable crime against human rights can happen right under our noses without anyone suspecting anything or acting on their suspicions. The book alternates between the journal entries of a kidnapped girl and that of a psychologist investigating a double homicide at a farmhouse. The two stories are inextricably linked and solving one may help the other. This was an incredibly suspenseful book, I couldn't put it down I thought the author did a wonderful job with both character creation and the pace of the book. He is a great writer and I plan on picking up his other books.
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Potential triggers include kidnapping, murder, psychological trauma, and references to mental illness.
From The Publisher:
Two missing girls. Two brutal murders. All connected to one farmhouse. Who is to blame?
When pretty and popular teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the girls are never found.
Three years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman.
Convinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, persuade the police to re-open the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind . . .
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