Behind Closed Doors by Carol Wyer

Earlier this year, I read A Life for a Life by Carol Wyer and really enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to reading her latest release – Behind Closed Doors.

The book begins with a prologue set in July 1992, then we fast-forward to April 2022. Stacey O’Hara is the main character in the book. Thirty years before, she was abducted and had lost a finger aged sixteen, but she can’t recall her memories of the events from that time due to dissociative amnesia.

Now forty-six, she has rebuilt her life. She has moved to Lancashire and is the senior reporter on the Lancaster Echo. Then one day, her ex-husband Jack Corrigan turns up and asks for her help. His daughter, Lyra (13) is in trouble, abducted and held against her will, like Stacey was… and he thinks Stacey is the only person who can help find her.

You are thrown right into the action here, there’s no preamble, there’s a crisis and you want to know more. There’s already tension because Stacey and Jack are exes and you soon find out Jack wasn’t the best husband ever. So there’s very little breathing space here, you’re on edge waiting to see what is going to happen and because Stacey isn’t really sure of Jack, the reader isn’t either, which adds to the tension. Can he really be trusted?

And then there’s Freya – Jack’s first wife and Lyra’s mother. Does she have a part to play in any of this? Nothing seems certain and the reader sways one way, then the other, trying to come up with answers. Who would do this and why? Is it a stranger or someone Lyra knows? How much danger is she in?

I really liked Stacey and felt sorry for her. I also liked Ashraf and thought his inclusion added a lot to the story, as did Danni’s, and it was good to get other people’s ideas and perspectives on the situation and what to do about it.

The book is set across four days – and what a whirlwind those four days are! It is fast-paced and holds your interest right until the end – and no, I didn’t guess who was behind it all either…

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 http://www.carolwyer.co.uk, subscribe to her YouTube channel, or follow her on Twitter: @carolewyer

Follow her at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carol-E-Wyer/221149241263847 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolwyer/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/carolewyer 

Website : https://www.carolwyer.co.uk

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60588361-behind-closed-doors

Buy Link –  https://geni.us/RUjn6H

Book Blurb

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?