Synopsis: ‘Let me out! Please!’ I shouted, banging on the door. How had I got here? What day was it? I couldn’t remember anything. But I knew I had become the fifth woman to be abducted.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I’m filled with dread. Everything looks just like the others described: a small hole in the door, a mattress and a narrow window allowing only a small chink of light. The jewellery given to me by my loving husband has gone and I’m in someone else’s clothes.
Just days before, I had interviewed the third victim for the local paper. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her story was the same as those before her: an ordinary woman, locked away for ten days then released with no explanation, and nothing – nothing she could think of – to link her to the others. Throughout the ordeal, her abductor stayed eerily silent.
I tell myself I’ll be safe in ten days. But I can’t help thinking of the fourth victim who is still missing. And then I hear the voice coming through the door. ‘You said everything would be fine. But it wasn’t was it?’ It is then that I realise. If I am to make it out alive, I need to revisit a dark secret of my own that I have spent a lifetime trying to forget.
Kat’s Rating: 4/5
My Review: It’s been a while since I read a Mel Sherratt and thought I would break up a series I am reading with a standalone and this seemed to fit the bill. Eva Farmer is a journalist who absolutely loves her work. Recently she has been covering the cases of women being snatched and then released after ten days. There seems to be no common links and none of the victims can seem to shed any light on the person responsible.
Early on in the book we get an idea of Eva’s personal life with her police husband Nick and her life seems just ordinary. It’s clear she has compassion for victims and her newspaper pieces tend to be very fair and balanced. When Eva herself is taken she has absolutely no ide why and more to the point what will happen to her. I must admit I felt like this was a bit of a departure from other Mel Sherratt books I have read, however that isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it, just to note that it is slightly set apart from her other style of books.
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