This series is a must read for all crime fiction fans, and The Family Secret, book 16, is no exception.
The title gives the plot away, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. The family showing a happy face to the public can be hugely different in the isolation of their own home.
It’s not the only isolation in the story. Detective Inspector Lottie Parker is newly single following a break up with one of her team, Boyd, and her mother’s dementia is getting worse, and her children and grandchild are always giving her worries.
One of the endearing things about this series is the soap opera that is Lottie’s life, and it plays a major part in this book.
As well as investigating murders and a potential kidnapping, she is being drained physically, and mentally, by things in her private life.
But the main focus is the crime.
A family murdered following a child’s Birthday party.
Twelve year old Freya is dead in her home, the day after her birthday party, and so are her mother and father. It’s a gruesome scene and all of the attending police officers are affected by what they see.
Kneeling at Freya’s side Lottie promises her that she will find the killer.
One key witness is Lily, Freya’s best friend who was supposed to sleep over after the party but changed her mind.
A luck escape, or an insight by somebody.
Before Lily can be interviewed properly she goes missing with her mother saying she had been “stolen” from her own home.
And so it begins. The hunt for a person who has murdered a family, and in all likelihood has kidnapped a child.
What are the secrets hidden behind the closed doors of both girls homes.
Are the parents really as they present themselves, or are there some dark secrets.
Patricia Gibney writes one of the most realistic crime fiction series there is on the shelves right now.
There will be people who have worked crime scenes that will make links to what she has written. In this book she tapped into the one thing that always plagued me.
The normality after the crime.
When she describes the first murder scene, following the birthday party, it was like she was inside my head.
Devastation in one part of the house and total normality in the rest of the premises. The detritus of the party, waiting to be cleaned up. A party dress that should never be part of this type of scene.
I know a few people that hated that normality as much as me, and in a few paragraphs Gibney captures it perfectly.
This story has real pace and is emotionally charged.
As far as fiction goes, it’s as good as it gets, and better than most.
Pages: 503. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now. Audiobook length: 13 hours 24 minutes. Narrator: Michele Moran
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