Riveting Police Procedural – The Hiding Place by Helen Phifer

Title:  The Hiding Place

Series: Detective Morgan Brookes #3

Author: Helen Phifer

Publisher: Bookouture

Published: June 1st, 2021

Pages: 320

Rating:  4.5*

My Review:

If you enjoy reading riveting police procedurals with great characters, plenty of twists and full of suspense, I advise you to get yourself a copy of this brilliant story. This is the third book in the series but you don’t need to have read the previous stories to enjoy this one.

The small town of Rydale Falls in Cumbria is the setting for this investigation which begins when nine year old Charlotte Standish goes missing. Detective Morgan Brookes and her team (Ben, Amy and Des) are called in to investigate and she discovers that a teenage girl went missing from her home on the same street fifteen years ago. Are the two cases connected? When another young girl goes missing the tension mounts . . . . .

This is a real page turner that had me resenting anything that interrupted my reading. It is every parent’s nightmare that their child goes missing and the danger to the girls is obvious from the start. Most of the story is related from Morgan’s point of view and shows how her own life is somewhat in turmoil, too, especially as she and her work partner, Detective Ben Matthews, seem to be fighting succumbing to their mutual attraction. With few clues, Morgan follows her instincts but when Ben is viciously attacked outside her home could the perpetrator have her in his sights? It is a dark story, one in which Morgan knows she needs to solve the case before anything happens to anyone else at the hands of this perpetrator.

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for my copy of this book which I have voluntarily read and honestly reviewed.

Description:

The little girl peered down the dark alleyway. She knew she wasn’t supposed to take this shortcut and her mother would kill her if she found out, but it was raining and all she wanted was to get home quickly. She stepped forward, not seeing the silent figure following her into the dark passageway…

When nine-year-old Charlotte Standish goes missing from her street in the small town of Rydale Falls, it sparks a media frenzy. Detective Morgan Brookes leads a frantic hunt for the girl, but little Charlie seems to have vanished into thin air.

Chasing up a lead at Charlie’s school, Morgan is chilled to learn that this isn’t the first time a child has gone missing on this street. Another girl disappeared fifteen years ago, and Morgan is the only one who thinks the cases could be related. But in the moment that she takes her eye off Charlie’s case to investigate the link between the two girls, another child, Macy, goes missing.

Then Morgan gets the call she was dreading, Charlie’s lifeless body has been found in a local park, lying in the shadow of a large tree. Morgan has let one girl down, but she refuses to give up on Macy. Determined to find an overlooked clue, she retraces Macy’s last steps. She’s getting close to the truth when her partner, Detective Ben Matthews, is attacked outside Morgan’s home. Is a twisted killer isolating Morgan from her team? And how long does Macy have left to live? Morgan must solve the case before more innocent lives are taken…

A nail-biting, unputdownable crime thriller that will keep you up all night, for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Patricia Gibney.

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://geni.us/B08XVYDCLJsocial

Apple: http://ow.ly/8r4850DPN5b

Kobo: http://ow.ly/1gmn50DPN2D

Google: http://ow.ly/yNii50DPN81

Author Bio:

Helen Phifer is the #1 Bestselling crime and horror novelist of the Annie Graham, Lucy Harwin and Beth Adams series. Helen lives in a small town in Cumbria. Surrounded by miles of coastline and only a short drive from the beautiful Lake District. She has always loved writing and reading since the days she learnt how to in infant school. She loves reading books that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and make her afraid to go to the toilet, alone in the middle of the night. She is eternally grateful to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert and Graham Masterton for scaring her senseless in her teenage years. Unable to find enough of the scary stories she loves to read, she decided to write her own.

Author Social Media Links:

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Website:     https://www.helenphifer.com