Лучшие книги Сары Хилари

DI Marnie Rome knows the sinister secrets that families can hide. She's still trying to uncover the truth of what drove her foster brother Stephen to murder her parents five years ago, and he's equally determined to keep her in the dark. But this new case surprises even her. Surely the corpses of two small boys, lying under concrete in a London garden, should be claimed by someone grieved by someone? The skeletons are found by a couple fostering a difficult teenaged boy named Clancy, in addition to their own two children. Clancy is a difficult, withdrawn fourteen year-old, and Marnie can't help seeing the shadow of Stephen in Clancy. His fascination with the gruesome discovery in the garden seems unhealthy, to say the least. Terry and Beth, his foster parents, are trying their hardest to help Clancy adjust to family life after years of abuse and neglect. Marnie doesn't know if they're wasting their time, but she suspects the family is in serious danger. Then a discovery in Terry and Beth's house makes Marnie look afresh at the relationships before her. Nothing, she realizes, is what it seems here. And does this discovery point to prove that Clancy is dangerous? And then there's the mystery of who is leaving little gifts for the dead boys. Is Marnie in danger of letting her own family's horror blind her? One thing's certain: when the couple's birth children go missing, she knows she can't waste any time finding them.

DI Marnie Rome knows this better than most. Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Marnie doesn’t talk much about her personal life, preferring to focus on work. Not even her partner, DS Noah Jake, knows much about Marnie’s past. Though as one of the few gay officers on the force and half Jamaican to boot, Noah’s not one to overshare about his private life either. Now Marnie and Noah are tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim.

Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defense. A crowd of witnesses in the domestic violence shelter where she’s staying saw it happen, but none of them are telling quite the same story, and the simple question remains: how did Leo Proctor get in to the secure shelter? Marnie and Noah shouldn’t even have been there when it happened but they were interviewing another resident, Ayana Mirza. They’re trying to get Ayana to testify against her brothers for pouring bleach on her face for bringing dishonor to the family, and blinding her in one eye. But Ayana knows that her brothers are looking for her, and she has no doubt that they’ll kill her this time.

As the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women's shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory: A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.