Title: Into the Dark
Author: Fiona Cummins
Publisher: Macmillan
Synopsis:
THE PLACE: Seawings, a beautiful Art Deco home overlooking the sweep of the bay in Midtown-on-Sea.
THE CRIME: The gilded Holden family – Piper and Gray and their two teenage children, Riva and Artie – has vanished from the house without a trace.
THE DETECTIVE: DS Saul Anguish, brilliant but with a dark past, treads the narrow line between light and shade.
One late autumn morning, Piper’s best friend arrives at Seawings to discover an eerie scene – the kettle is still warm, all the family’s phones are charging on the worktop, the cars are in the garage. But the house is deserted.
In fifteen-year-old Riva Holden’s bedroom, scrawled across the mirror in blood, are three words:
Make
Them
Stop.What happens next?
My review:
Into the Dark has a very intriguing synopsis, and I’m glad I didn’t know anything else about the story other than what is provided there. This book is full of unlikeable, flawed characters and the more awful they are, the more I gleefully raced through its pages – you don’t need to like them, you just need to let yourself be drawn into this chilling story.
It took me a little while to get into, I have to admit – the start felt a bit slow despite lots happening – but then suddenly I found myself intrigued! There are so many puzzling parts to the plot and I just wanted to keep reading and reading to work out what happened to the Holden family.
No one and nothing in Into the Dark is quite as they seem, and I loved that about this book. Just when you think you have it all figured out, you’re thrown sideways again with a twist or a curveball that keeps you guessing. I also liked the fact that the police officer in this novel, Saul, is dark and very creepy himself – he, along with some of his colleagues, is not your usual fictional detective and this adds an extra edge to the story.
All topped off with a satisfying ending! Recommended.
My rating: 4/5
Many thanks to the publisher, Macmillan, for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest review.