Classic cold case murder investigation.
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The blurb
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.
The Review
Aahhh - the cold case murder investigation. I just love me one of those. Something about a heinous act perpetrated all those years ago, being revisited when suddenly new evidence is unearthed. And in this case, it's not any old evidence, it's only the body of the murder victim that's been discovered.
The story is told in alternating timelines - so the process of the investigation is experienced in real time, and the flashbacks to Aurora's fateful night camping with her sister and friends, are told simultaneously. This is a well worked method of drip feeding the story to the reader and is very effective at unearthing little nuggets of information as you go.
However, for me, this was just too long - it felt like the author was too keen to throw rather a lot of red herrings into our path before the reveal. And then when we reached the 'reveal' it had become an anticlimax. Usually with this type of book you expect a dark twist in the reveal, so the ending left me a little unsatisfied.
The author works hard to give you reasons to doubt all of the characters and all could be deemed worthy suspects at one point or another. However, sometimes the effort to do this made the narrative confusing and a little bit contrived. It was suprising as well how many of the now grown up teenagers that had been at the fateful camping trip seemed to display little or no emotion. To me, you would think this is the kind of an event that would shape most people's lives irrevocably, but the majority of them seemed to continue on the trajectory of success they were on prior.
The chapters written from Aurora's perspective are both chilling and haunting. There is something about reading a character's narrative, when you as the reader, know that they are shortly about to die. Also the team investigating the murder were 4 really distinct and interesting characters and I would definitely like to see how their individual storytelling deliver in further books in the series.
She lies in wait was released on 21st March 2019 by Penguin UK - Michael Joseph.
Big thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.