"DCI Jonah Sheens Series"--from author Gytha Lodge--searing, psychologically captivating novels mark the arrival of a dazzling new talent, and the start of a new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens

  
She Lies in Wait (DCI Jonah Sheens, #1)

Six friends. One killer. Who do you trust? A teen girl is missing after a night of partying; thirty years later, the discovery of her body reopens a cold case in an absorbing novel featuring a small-town cop determined to finally get to the truth—for fans of Tana French and Kate Atkinson.

“What a marvel! A corkscrew-twisty, knife-sharp thriller—yet it doubles as a tender ode to loss and longing. Prepare to be haunted.”—A. J. Finn, author of the New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window

On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.

Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.

This searing, psychologically captivating novel marks the arrival of a dazzling new talent, and the start of a new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens.

Praise for She Lies in Wait

“This enjoyably chilling suspense tale . . . conveys both the thrills and the dangers of being a teenager on the brink of adult independence. . . . The fascination of this story is in the character studies of the surviving children, all grown up now and participants in a dark mystery that they all wish had never seen the light of day.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The mystery intrigues and twists, offering enough red herrings and moments of police procedural to please fans of the genre.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Neatly plotted and nicely atmospheric . . . This British import is plausible and eminently satisfying. Encore, please.”—Booklist




Watching from the Dark

One crime. One witness. One question . . . Why didn’t he call the police?

 

When a vibrant young woman is murdered over video chat, a small-town detective wades into a circle of friends and lovers with dangerous secrets–from the acclaimed author of the “enjoyably chilling”* She Lies in Wait.

Aidan Poole logs onto his laptop late at night to Skype his girlfriend, Zoe. To his horror, he realizes that there is someone else in her flat, and Aidan can only listen to the sounds of a violent struggle taking place in the bathroom–and then the sound of silence. Aidan is desperate to find out if Zoe is okay. But then why is he so hesitant to call the police?

When his messages finally reach them, Detective Jonah Sheens and his team take the case–and discover the body. They soon find that no one has a bad word to say about Zoe, a big-hearted young woman at the center of a curious web of waifs and strays, each relying on her for support, each hiding dark secrets and buried resentments. Has one of her so-called “friends” been driven to murder? Or does Aidan have the biggest secret of them all?

 

Reviews

 

“Gripping.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Lodge alternates between chapters following the investigation into Zoe’s death and chapters that recount the final twenty months of her life, allowing the reader to understand Zoe as a fully rounded and complicated character, not just a victim. This choice, trendy in thrillers but almost always effective when the characters are strong, consistently reminds us to look beyond simplistic binaries of victim and perpetrator, innocent and guilty, and recognize that all humans make problematic choices, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad. Lodge's choices celebrate the complexity of humanity and elevate this police procedural.”—Kirkus

Gytha Lodge

 

Gytha Lodge is a multi-award-winning playwright, novelist and writer for video games and screen. She is also a single parent who blogs about the ridiculousness of bringing up a mega-nerd small boy.

She has a profound addiction to tea, crosswords and awful puns. When not writing, she heads up a copy-writing team at a global translation firm, where she generally tries to keep all the video-game writing to herself.

She studied English at Cambridge, where she became known quite quickly for her brand of twisty, dark yet entertaining drama. She later took the Creative Writing MA at UEA.

https://imperfectsingleparent.blog/