The Hiding Place – ARC Book Review

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.

No. of pages:- 289 pages

Date published:- will be published on 1st June 2021

Publisher:- Bookouture

Genre:- Thriller

Detective Morgan Brookes is back in the scene!

Nine-year-old girl named Charlie goes missing in a neighborhood in Ryder Falls. As it involves a child, the police gets involved in the case and then focus on the sex offender who happened to be living in the same neighborhood. Meanwhile, while investigating, Morgan finds out that a girl who attended the same school as Charlie went missing fifteen years ago and couldn’t help notice that there’s some similarity between the two cases. But when Charlie’s body was found a few days later and another girl named Macy goes missing in the same neighborhood, they must find the culprit before Macy is dead…

This is the third book of the Detective Morgan Brooke’s installment. But to me, unlike the first two books, this book wasn’t as good as the first two books. The book was fast paced but not much twists and turns though somehow, the reader is able to be hooked into the book. Not much of suspects in the book so it’s a bit predictable as to who the killer could be. But nonetheless I did enjoy this book though I didn’t find much exciting as her two previous books.

This book worth three stars the fact that still it’s a good thriller! Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

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.

Her debut novel The Ghost House was released October 2013 and introduced readers to police officer Annie Graham. It went on to be an Amazon #1 bestseller in Canada. It reached #1 on the Amazon Contemporary Horror Charts in both the UK and the US, pushing her idol Stephen King off his #1 spot many times. She was thrilled when the second book in the series The Secrets of the Shadows managed to push The Ghost House off its #1 spot even if it was a little surreal. This was followed by The Forgotten Cottage, The Lake House, The Girls in the Woods and The Face Behind the Mask.

The Good Sisters is a standalone old, fashioned horror story which Helen admits scared her so much when she was writing it that she couldn’t write once it got dark. Set in an abandoned convent it will definitely give you the chills.

March 2017 saw the publication of Dark House, a gripping psychological thriller which introduced readers to the dangerous world of Detective Inspector Lucy Harwin. This was followed by Dying Breath and Last Light.

The Haunting on West Tenth Street is a supernatural thriller set on the streets of New York and features Homicide Detective Maria Miller.

Her brand new series featuring Forensic Pathologist Beth Adams is published July 16th 2019