How far would you go to protect your child?
Maggie’s daughter Penny is her whole world… and she’d do anything to protect her. So when Maggie wakes one night to find a strange woman in her home, she runs to lock herself in her bedroom with her child. But Maggie knows why she’s come…
Someone has been targeting mothers and offering them a choice: do as he says or their child disappears. This stranger in her home has until dawn to follow his orders… but Maggie too has the ‘choice’ to make. Can she put the pieces together to stop the cycle before her time is up?
Many thanks to the publishers for my advance copy of Keep Her Safe which I received through Netgalley and chose to review.
This time last year I hadn't read any of Richard Parker's books. Keep Her Safe is the third of his titles I've read since June which should give you an idea of how much I love his books. Both Follow You and Hide and Seek made it onto my list of top reads of 2017 so I had high expectations for his latest title.
I wasn't disappointed - Keep Her Safe is a read in one sitting because you can't put it down and your family don't really need to eat anyway sort of book. From the chilling opening chapter when Maggie wakes to find a stranger in her home through to the dark and terrifying conclusion, this breathtaking rollercoaster of a read should probably come with the sort of health warning you see at theme parks - those with heart conditions and of nervous disposition should proceed with caution! Richard Parker's great skill is in taking what is a recognisable, even universal fear - in this case something terrible happening to your child - and twisting it to make it even more frightening that you ever imagined.
This is actually a very difficult review to write; not because I don't have anything positive to say about the book - on the contrary, it is a superb read - but because it has a plot that deserves to be kept a secret for each new reader to discover for themselves.
Told in the third person, the focus of the chapters alternates between Maggie and Holly. This means the action unfolds from different perspectives, which serves to either enlighten or further puzzle readers. They are both complex women whose decision making is not always rational and yet often understandable, caught up in a depraved game they are forced to keep playing until the very end and driven to extreme measures by a twisted individual who appears to hold all the power. They are not always likeable but their resoluteness in the face of what appears to be a hopeless situation is absolutely compelling. As they learn the horrific truth of what motivates the killer the tension is almost unbearable.
Keep Her Safe is an intricately plotted, intelligent and disquieting thriller that takes its readers into the grimmer echelons of society as it explores just what happens to people faced with a seemingly impossible choice - just what are they capable of? Richly atmospheric, with the cold and snow playing a vital part in the story, I loved every minute of this book; it's fast paced, exciting and dark -just what I've come to expect from a Richard Parker novel and will undoubtedly feature on my top reads of 2018 list. Highly recommended.
Keep Her Safe is published by Bookouture and can be purchased here.
About the Author
Richard Parker was formerly a TV script writer, script editor and producer before turning his hand to penning twisted standalone thrillers.
KEEP HER SAFE is the latest book to be published by Bookouture on January 11th 2018.
HIDE AND SEEK was his fifth book published in August 2017.
FOLLOW YOU was his fourth psychological thriller. Reviewers are saying it’s Bookouture’s darkest crime novel to date.
STALK ME was his third and rode high in the UK and US charts.
SCARE ME was his second. Hollywood movie rights have been acquired by major US studio, Relativity Media. Star of PRISON BREAK and screenwriter of dark horror thriller STOKER, Wentworth Miller, has written the big screen adaptation.
STOP ME, Richard’s darkly fiendish debut, was shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award.
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