by Mary Morrissey, Nuala O'Connor, Jane Lugea, Sinéad Gleeson, Jan Carson
First published 2022
In a quiet Belfast neighborhood, community nurse Marie McKinney notices her patients are disappearing—not dying, not moving, simply erasing from their homes and streets. Each vanished patient leaves behind an intricate hand-drawn map marked with strange symbols and routes that don't correspond to any known geography. As more residents go missing, Marie begins tracking these maps, discovering they form a bizarre interconnected network across the city's edges. Local authorities dismiss her concerns, attributing the disappearances to administrative errors or elderly confusion. But Marie knows something more deliberate is happening: these maps are instructions, and someone—or something—is methodically removing people from the city's fabric. With each discovered map, the pattern grows more complex, and Marie realizes she might be the only person capable of understanding the underlying logic of these silent removals. Her investigation becomes a race to interrupt a process she doesn't yet comprehend.
Genres: suspense, mystery, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Belfast, Northern Ireland
240 pages · Paperback · New Island Books