The Missing Hours

December 15, 2017
The generally quiet borderland between England and Wales plays host to two mysteries that are clearly connected, though it's impossible to say how.Twenty hours after psychologist Selena Cole vanishes from her daughters' sides at a local playground, she reappears just as abruptly and mysteriously with unidentified blood on her sweater and no memory of her time away. Her disappearance is particularly ironic because the Cole Group, the company founded by her and her late husband, Ed, had specialized in kidnap and ransom cases, some of them involving corporate employees and tourists who'd been abducted by experienced groups like Escorpion Rojo that used scopolamine, "devil's breath," to reduce their victims to zombies with neither the will to fight their kidnappers nor any memory of their ordeal. But the disappearance and reappearance of the woman newspapers call The Rescuer, DC Leah Mackay soon realizes, is only half the story. Leah's brother, newly minted DS Finn Hale, is heading the team investigating the fatal stabbing of defense solicitor Dominic Newell. The obvious suspect in Newell's murder, his troublesome client Beck Chambers, has a disappointingly solid alibi for the killing but turns out to be connected to the Coles, who rescued him when he was taken hostage five years ago and then offered him a job. As Finn pursues one false lead after another, Kavanagh (The Killer on the Wall, 2017, etc.) intersperses her account of Leah's inquiries with flashbacks recounting some of the Cole Group's earlier cases, any one of which would be enough to make you think twice before booking your next trip to Latin America. Which of them provides the most revealing analogue to Selena's own case?In the end, the kidnapping back stories are more plausible, more compelling, and more shivery than the double-decker present-day mystery, whose final surprise is the feeblest of them all.

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January 22, 2018
The remote borderland between England and Wales provides the atmospheric setting for this intricately plotted crime novel from British author Kavanagh (Falling). Det. Constable Leah Mackay investigates when Selena Cole goes missing from a playground, leaving her children behind. Hours later, Selena reappears with no memory of what happened to her and blood on her sweater. Meanwhile, Det. Sgt. Finn Hale, Leah’s brother, looks into the murder of defense lawyer Dominic Lowell, whose body was found alongside a mountain road. As Lean and Finn pursue their respective cases, the officers begin to wonder if they’re linked. Selena and her late husband, Ed, owned the Cole Group—a company specializing in kidnap prevention, ransom negotiations, and rescues throughout the world—until Ed’s death in a bombing. Dominic may have been closer to members of the Cole Group than anyone has let on. Frustrated by the half-truths and omissions of Selena and those around her, Leah and Finn must examine all the Cole employees and their past missions to find a murderer. Readers will hope these sibling cops return in a sequel. Agent: Camilla Wray, Darley Anderson Literary (U.K.).

February 15, 2018
A missing woman. A dead body. But who is the victim and who is the killer is anybody's guess. Detective Constable Leah Mackay and her brother, Detective Sergeant Finn Hale, serve on the police force in a sleepy English town that rarely sees any serious crime. So when Selena Cole goes missing and a man is found murdered, there is more than enough cause for alarm. Twenty hours later, Selena returns to her two children, seemingly unharmed. When Leah asks Selena about those missing hours, she claims not to remember. And after noticing what appears to be blood on Selena's sweater, Leah is uncertain whether Selena is a victimor a murderer. Alternating between the perspectives of Leah and Finn allows readers to follow along with both detectives as they try to solve their respective cases. When it is revealed that Selena works as a consultant on kidnap and ransom cases, both wonder if something more sinister is at work. Fans of Gilly Macmillan's What She Knew (2016) will enjoy Kavanagh's (After We Fall, 2015) latest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)