#BookReview ‘Into The Dark’ by Fiona Cummins

About the book…

Into the Dark is the new dark and gripping crime thriller from Fiona Cummins about revenge, greed, ambition and the true cost of friendship.

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?

I can guarantee that what happens next is up will be down, back will be front and the only thing which you can be certain of, is that you will be entirely satisfied by this exceptional thriller!

It takes two marriages, who from the outside appear picture perfect, and throws each and every aspect which creates that veneer and sands them down to the bone to expose the sheer marrow.

The simplest of actions , calling on a  friend to go for a morning run, are thrown into disarray by the discovery that the normally pin perfect Piper has left a bombsite of a house where nothing is where it should be, There is also the matter of the cleaner, a young Polish beauty who notices the spray of blood in a  fine arcing mist on the art deco chandelier that she meticulously cleaned the previous week…

Into this bizarre opener comes an outsider, Saul Anguish, looking for respite, a reprieve or just a chance of resurrection as Midtown’s newest policeman.

Thrown headlong into this missing person’s case, he quickly connects with linguist Dr Clover March, brought in to analyse the writing left on teen daughter Riva’s mirror, ‘Make them stop’.

They have far more in common than at first appears, and so an engaging relationship begins as those around them fracture and spiral apart….

Why has Julianne spent so much time at funerals lately?

Her old school friends seem to be dropping like flies…

Why does Piper suddenly find the bottomless bank accounts which her husband lets her use without qualm have all been emptied?

Is Riva , the teen, the golden girl at the exclusive school which she attends, or is that just a facade as well?

As Julianne acknowledges at the start of the book, their friendship was forged in the bonds of motherhood, Piper having rescued her from the deep depression which she sunk into after the deaths of her parents in a bizaree and tragic chainsaw accident.

Those thrown together at parenthood’s beginnings, out of necessity and seeking another kindred soul who is not scared to admit that actually, being a mother can suck really, really hard on occasion, often find that these friendships get put aside as the children, forced to play together from proximity choose their own friends. So I recognised just what effort it takes to keep a relationship going after the offspring have grown.

Piper would not just have disappeared without forward notice. However, when answer phone messages come to light which implicate Gray in abusing his wife, Julianne has to find her inner strength and risk her own marriage to fight for her friend.

For going into the dark reflects not only the mysterious disappearance of the Holden family, but also the dark recesses of the human soul which, unless you let someone in, you would never even know is there. How far will a person go to protect and look after that secret self?

An engaging and thrilling dive into toxic relationships, coercive control, the most dysfunctional families living in the most boring, every town you can imagine, this will keep you guessing what is going on, as short chapter after short chapter builds a picture of artifice, betrayal and murder.

Thank you very much to Laura Sherlock for sending me a gifted review copy of ‘Into The Dark’ which is out now from all good bookshops!

About the author…

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former Daily Mirror showbusiness journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy Writing A Novel course. ‘Rattle’, her debut novel, has been translated into several languages and received widespread critical acclaim from authors including Val McDermid, Lee Child and Martina Cole.

Links-https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk/agent-sophie-lambert-and-author-fiona-cummins-stay-true-to-your-instincts/

Twitter @FionaAnnCummins @panmacmillan