CRITICAL INCIDENTS

This gripping and emotionally charged thriller introduces Detective Inspector Robin Lyons at her lowest point. Dismissed from the Met's Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, she is forced to return to Birmingham, the city she fled at 18, along with her teenage daughter, Lennie. Back in her childhood home, sharing a bunk bed and locked in a fraught relationship with her mother, Robin's life feels painfully small. Cut off from the job that defined her, Robin takes work as a benefit fraud investigator. Only her long-standing friendship with Corinna offers any sense of comfort. But when Corinna's family is suddenly torn apart by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin cannot stay on the sidelines. Unable to trust the official investigation and unsettled to find that the case is being led by her ex-boyfriend, the love of her teenage years, Robin begins asking her own questions. What starts as loyalty to a friend soon opens into something darker, as she uncovers a possible link to the earlier disappearance of a young woman. Taut, thoughtful and psychologically sharp, the novel explores trust, loyalty and the hidden lives of those closest to us and asks how far we might go to protect them, or ourselves. 388 pages.