Part of Cyrus Haven
First published 2024
On a hot summer day, seventeen migrants drown off a Lincolnshire beach. One teenage boy survives and tells police their boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Evie Cormac watches the bodies come ashore and feels something she cannot explain, a pull toward this tragedy that goes beyond witness. Evie has carried her past like a locked room. As a child, police found her hiding in a secret chamber beside a man who had been tortured to death. Her captors were never caught. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is brought in to investigate the murders. He notices Evie's reaction and understands it immediately: she has some connection to what happened on that water. Cyrus has spent years trying to break open the mystery of Evie's origins. This case might finally do it. But the people who hurt Evie as a child are still out there, still protected, and pulling on that thread means pulling them back into the light. Someone will pay for that. The question is who.
Genres: mystery, crime, contemporary, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, intense, psychological, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, mysterious-past, trauma-recovery, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Lincolnshire, England
Period: contemporary, present-day
336 pages · Hardcover · Scribner
Content warnings: child-abuse, murder, torture, trafficking