Behind Closed Doors
Carol Wyer
326 pages
Thomas & Mercer
published December 6, 2022
About the book
Two kidnappings, thirty years apart. Can Stacey face her own dark past in order to save her stepdaughter?
When Stacey’s ex-husband turns up on her doorstep begging her to help save his kidnapped thirteen-year-old daughter, Lyra, the terror is all too familiar. Stacey’s own violent kidnapping thirty years ago was never solved, and while a severe case of amnesia spares her from recalling the specific horrors, she remembers enough…
Stacey knows her father never paid the ransom—she has the missing pinkie finger to prove it. She knows she was only saved because of an anonymous tip-off to the police. And she knows her captor was never apprehended.
Lyra’s kidnappers have made it clear the police must not get involved. But Stacey can’t shake the eerie similarities between the two cases, and she’ll use whatever she can, from her journalistic powers to her shady contacts, to save Lyra from the same nightmare. Desperate to find any link between Lyra’s abduction and her own, Stacey forces herself to revisit her forgotten, traumatic past for clues.
But can she make sense of the terrible secrets she unearths in time to save Lyra? And if she does, is she ready to face her own tormentor?
My review
OK what did I just read? I was kept guessing until the very end. I couldn’t decide if Stacey was seeing patterns where there weren’t because her kidnapping was never solved or if the similarities were more than coincidence. Everything takes place over 4 days, so while there is a lot of character development, and the characters are doozies, things move both quickly and slowly. This isn’t fast paced as it is really a chess match between the kidnapper and Stacey and Jack trying to find his daughter.
I find it an interesting choice to have a reporter and lawyer trying to solve the case for the most part. A little twist on the traditional crime novel. And there are a few twists along the way.
I enjoyed the cat and mouse game. I think this will appeal to both traditional and nontraditional crime lovers.
Author Bio
USA Today bestselling author and winner of The People’s Book Prize Award, Carol Wyer’s crime novels have sold over one million copies and been translated into nine languages.
A move from humour to the dark side; in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and proved that Carol had found her true niche.
February 2021 saw the release of the first in the much-anticipated new series, featuring DI Kate Young. An Eye For An Eye was chosen as a Kindle First Reads and became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK and Amazon Australia.
Carol has had articles published in national magazines “Woman’s Weekly”, featured in “Take A Break”, “Choice”, “Yours” and “Woman’s Own” magazines and the Huffington Post. She’s also been interviewed on numerous radio shows discussing Irritable Male Syndrome and Ageing Disgracefully; and on BBC Breakfast television.
She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband Mr. Grumpy… who is very, very grumpy. When she is not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.
To learn more, go to www.carolwyer.co.uk, subscribe to her YouTube channel, or follow her on social media.
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