The Missing Hours by Emma Kavanagh #bookreview #thriller

Title: The Missing Hours

Author: Emma Kavanagh

Publisher: Kensington

Publication Date: February 27, 2018

Page Count: 369

My rating:  2 1/2 stars

About the book:

“Murderers are rarely who you imagine them to be . . . ”

One moment, Selena Cole is at the playground with her children . . . the next, she has vanished without a trace.

The body of Dominic Newell, a well-respected lawyer, is found on a remote mountain road, blood oozing from the stab wound in his neck.

In the sleepy borderland between England and Wales, sheep outnumber people and serious crimes are rare. Which makes this Tuesday morning, with two calls coming in to the local police station, even more remarkable. Detective Constable Leah Mackay and her brother, Detective Sergeant Finn Hale, begin their respective investigations, but soon find them inextricably linked. And when Selena is found alive and unhurt twenty hours later, the mystery deepens.

Selena’s work consulting on kidnap and ransom cases has brought her into close contact with ruthless criminals and international drug lords. But now, as Selena walks back into her life wearing a blood-spattered sweater, claiming no memory of the preceding hours, Leah can’t be sure if she is a victim, a liar, or a murder suspect.

Leah and Finn delve into each case, untangling the secrets and betrayals—large and small—that can lie just beneath the surface of a life, yet unprepared for where both trails will lead.

With engrossing characters, devilish twists, and evocative prose, The Missing Hours is that rare page-turner—as satisfying and complex as it is unpredictable.

The Missing Hours by Emma Kavanagh is a thriller read that is told from multiple points of view throughout the story. There is also bit of reports, mails etc between the chapters that pertain to what is going on in the story at any given time.

The book starts off with a little girl at a playground who has wandered off from her mother and younger sibling but when she returns her mother is nowhere to be found. This opens up an investigation introducing one of the detectives in the story.

Now after a reader starts learning of the missing woman another case comes up when the body of a murdered lawyer is found and there’s a second investigation started. Detective Constable Leah Mackay and her brother, Detective Sergeant Finn Hale have each been given one of the cases and as they delve into them there starts to be clues that maybe these aren’t separate events.

The general idea of this story sounds like one that would have grabbed me right from the opening and have the pages flying by but that simply wasn’t the case with this book. It wasn’t a bad read but it never really gripped me and hooked me into the story. It’s really an incredibly slow paced read which is always a struggle for me but I think having all the extra reports and things between chapters slowed it even more leaving me struggling to finish. In the end this one just wasn’t my style leaving me to rate it at 2.5 stars but I’m sure others out there will love it more than I did.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

Emma Kavanagh is the acclaimed UK bestselling author of Falling and Hidden. Born and raised in South Wales, she is a former police and military psychologist. After completing her PhD, Emma began her own consultancy business, providing training to police and military across the UK and Europe. She taught police officers and NATO personnel about the psychology of critical incidents, terrorism, body recovery and hostage negotiation. She has run around muddy fields taking part in tactical exercises, has designed live fire training events, has been a VIP under bodyguard protection and has fired more than her fair share of weapons. She is married with two small sons and considers herself incredibly privileged to get to make up stories for a living.