She lies in wait A novel

Gytha Lodge

Book - 2019

"One night during the scorching summer of 1983, a group of teenagers go camping in the forest. 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 in the morning, the youngest in the group, 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 found. The search is eventually called off. Thirty years later Aurora's body is unearthed and Jonah Sheens is the detective put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, he had played a part in the search as a young cop, a...nd their small-town community meant he had known the teenagers--including Aurora--personally. Now, he's determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. His investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events of that night--events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly and forever changed"--

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Subjects
Genres
Suspense fiction
Detective and mystery fiction
Published
New York : Random House 2019.
Language
English
Main Author
Gytha Lodge (author)
Edition
First U.S. Edition
Physical Description
354 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9781984817358
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE IS a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves. Too much reality - or too much foolishness - and the pact made with the reader to believe in the unbelievable is broken. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula in AN ANONYMOUS GIRL (St. Martin's, $27.99), a creepy-crawly tale about putting your trust in a stranger; specifically, in a strange psychologist. Jessica Farris, a young theatrical makeup artist living on peanuts, sneaks into a high-paying "morality and ethics research project" being conducted by Lydia Shields, a psychology professor at New York University. Anticipating a formal printed questionnaire, Jessica is disconcerted to be bombarded with highly personal questions. "Subject 52, you need to dig deeper," she's prompted by the dauntingly elegant Dr. Shields, who knows Jessica is an impostor, but finds her interesting. And dig she does, revealing herself so completely that Dr. Shields focuses exclusively on her. Although this will no doubt set off alarms for discerning readers, Jessica seems oblivious to the unlikelihood of such a setup. And indeed, it turns out that Dr. Shields is really looking for an attractive (and rather dumb) young woman to test her husband's fidelity. Given the rather far-fetched premise of this tale of mutual sexual obsession, the authors do a neat job of ratcheting up the suspense when Jessica begins going out on assignments to pick up married men in bars. And it comes uncomfortably close to being a justifiable betrayal when Dr. Shields's husband has an affair with Jessica, confirming his wife's previously unfounded hypothesis that he's "an unrepentant adulterer." At least he has the discretion to warn his lover about his wife. "She's dangerous," he says. "Watch yourself." But it's the danger that makes infidelity such fun, and the authors know exactly how to play on their characters' love of danger to bring them to the brink of disaster - and dare them to jump off. you could choke on the bonedry atmosphere of SCRUBLANDS (Atria, $26.99), Chris Hammer's gritty debut novel about a sex scandal that has left a small Australian desert town reeling. A year has passed since a church shooting torched the parched landscape of Riversend, where everyone talks about the punishing weather but few have the stamina to take it without boiling over into rage or despair. The chary locals are less forthcoming about the lingering horror of the mass shooting in which a young priest took the lives of five members of his elderly congregation. A journalist named Martin Scarsden has been assigned by his editor at The Sydney Morning Herald to write a feature about how the town is coping with the trauma, only to be told by Mandalay Blonde, the owner of a bookstore, that the real story is why the priest carried out the killings in the first place. And while he's at it, why not find out if the accepted motive of pedophilia holds up. Taking up the challenge, Scarsden delves into the history of this cursed town and its haunted inhabitants, emerging with a sensitively rendered back story about people who have willfully blinded themselves by staring into the sun too long. the only thing sadder than a majestic hotel fallen on hard times is one with a dead body in Room 413. Detective Aidán Waits of the Manchester police force finds the corpse, its jaws locked in a hideous death grin, in Joseph Knox's edgy noir mystery THE SMILING MAN (Crown, $26), and for his sins catches the case. Those transgressions include a meth habit that pretty much puts Waits in debt to his hard-nosed superior officer, Superintendent Parrs, who holds him on a short leash. "It's convenient to keep a compromised officer around the place," Parrs gloats. "Someone I've got so much dirt on that I can use him for special jobs." Here, "special" means "illegal," and Waits uses his burglary skills to plant drugs on a suspect. Despite these unorthodox ploys, he's a smart guy who understands that "sometimes you confound expectations, sometimes you grow into the thing that people think you are." thirty years ago, six teenagers went camping in Brinken Wood. Five of them came out alive, and one of them was never seen again until now, in the opening pages of SHE LIES IN WAIT (Random House, $27). This enjoyably chilling suspense tale by Gytha Lodge conveys both the thrills and the dangers of being a teenager on the brink of adult independence. Aurora Jackson never had the chance to taste those thrills before the dangers caught up with her, leaving her bones behind to be found by a rebellious little girl poking around in the woods. Lodge tells the story in interlocking time frames that shift from the present to a summer day in 1983 when 14-year-old Aurora was allowed to hang out with her older sister Topaz's "strange, anarchic, brilliant and beautiful friends." The obvious questions of how she died and at whose hand are properly dealt with. But the fascination of this story is in the character studies of the surviving children, all grown up now and participants in a dark mystery that they all wish had never seen the light of day. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review

There were seven of them, seven teens on a weekend camping trip Brett, Connor, Daniel, JoJo, Coralie, Topaz, and Aurora. After a night of partying, fueled by alcohol and Dexedrine, six of the teens wake up to discover the seventh, Aurora (Topaz's shy, awkward younger sister) missing. And missing she will stay for the next 30 years until her remains are found buried near the campsite, and it is discovered that she had been raped before dying. Enter Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens, who, 30 years earlier, had been at school with the other teens and who now discovers that the surviving six are still a tight-knit group, though one of them is a rapist and murderer. Ah, but which one? This first in a promised series of Jonah Sheens mysteries is a bit anticlimactic, though the story is neatly plotted and nicely atmospheric. And, yes, there is the obligatory, teasing red herring, but the solution to this British import is plausible and eminently satisfying. Encore, please.--Michael Cart Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

On July 22, 1983, bright, beautiful 14-year-old Aurora Jackson, the victim at the heart of British author Lodge's atmospheric debut, disappeared in Brinken Wood in England's New Forest. The discovery of her remains 30 years later near the site where she was camping with her older sister and five other schoolmates catapults Southampton Det. Chief Insp. Jonah Sheens back to one of his first-and most haunting-investigations. The secluded location suggests that the prime suspects remain the same tight circle of family and friends who were in the woods that night-a prospect troubling to the enigmatic Sheens for reasons that will only gradually emerge. Lodge smoothly intercuts the present-day police probe by whip-sharp recent transfer Det. Constable Juliette Hanson and other team members with flashbacks to the last day of Aurora's life as seen through her eyes. In large part due to flip-flops to facilitate the plot, the surviving campers, including a current MP, never become as convincing as the detectives. Nonetheless, this psychological thriller marks a promising start to a planned series. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

When a teenage girl goes missing after a wild camping trip in Lodge's debut thriller, those involved must live with uncertainty for 30 years, until her body is found.Seven teenagers go into the forest in southeast England; only six return. Thirty years later, Aurora Jackson's body is found near the campsite where she disappeared. DCI Jonah Sheens, a young policeman when Aurora went missing and only a few years ahead of her in school, has personal connections to the case; he remembers the first unrelenting rounds of interviews that never turned into leads, and he knows that, with a body in hand, it will be only a matter of time before Aurora's killer is exposed. There were six others in the woods that nightAurora's beautiful, wild older sister, Topaz; wealthy, connected Daniel; tattooed, volatile Connor; independent tomboy Jojo; childlike Coralie; and handsome star athlete Brett, the newest member of the group. Most of them were drunk and some high, so their recollections of the night have never been clear, but they have maintained their innocence and served as one another's alibis. But time can erode even the deepest devotion and friendship. Lodge alternates chapters between the present day, starting with the finding of the body, and the night of Aurora's disappearance. The characters are presented both as teenagers and then as people in their 40s who have never quite moved on from that terrible night. Sheens and his team are compassionate, clever, and likable, each with a story that will, we assume, be developed in later books. Despite the small list of suspects, the mystery intrigues and twists, offering enough red herrings and moments of police procedural to please fans of the genre.There are already two more DCI Sheens novels in the workshooray! Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 Jonah was halfway up Blissford Hill when he felt the buzz of his phone in the zip pocket on the back of his Lycra. He was standing up on the pedals and slogging upward. He considered ignoring it, and then had a vivid image of his mum in hospital. And following that, he had a slightly stomach-­turning thought that it might be Michelle. Which was just as irrational as every other time he'd believed it in the last eight months, but he thought it anyway. He braked with gritted teeth and stopped his grinding climb. He caught his shin on one of the pedals as he jumped down, and was savage by the time he'd rooted his phone out and seen DS Lightman's extension flashing on the screen. "Ben?" he said, and then moved the phone away from his mouth to mask his heavy breathing. "Sorry, Chief." Lightman didn't sound it. Never really sounded anything. Michelle had liked to call him Barbie. Exquisitely pretty and emotionless. A lot smarter than Barbie, though, Jonah knew. "Call from DCS Wilkinson. He wants you to postpone your days off to investigate a possible homicide." Jonah let the DS wait in silence. He looked up at the tree-­shadowed top of the hill. It was a slog away, but he wanted the slog. His legs were crying out for it. He squeezed the drop handles of his bike with his free hand and felt the sweat on his palm. He hadn't spent enough time doing this recently. "Sir?" "Where?" he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation. "Brinken Wood." There was another silence, but this one wasn't deliberate. He felt knocked off balance. "Recent remains?" he asked in the end, though he thought he knew the answer. "No. DCS says not," said the sergeant, who was too young to understand. His day of cycling was over, but Jonah suddenly felt too old for it anyway. He couldn't remember ever feeling old before. "Send a car to pick me up in Godshill. Bring the kit bag from behind my desk. And find someone to lend me a deodorant." "Yes, sir," Lightman answered, his voice as level as ever. Jonah slotted his phone back into the pocket of his technical top. There was sweat already cooling on him and leaving him chilled. He ought to get cycling again. It was a few more miles to Godshill. He stayed there, unmoving, for a full minute, then swung his leg off the Cannondale and started to walk it slowly up the hill. Hanson was in such a hurry to climb out of the car that she caught the sleeve of her expensive new suit on a protruding piece in the door and pulled a thread. It gave her a slightly sick feeling. She hadn't really been able to afford it in the first place. She'd bought three others in her first two weeks as a DC, having previously owned only jeans, tank tops, and sweaters, and a few dresses for going out. Suits were bloody expensive, and she resented the money she could have been spending on her unreliable car. Or maybe on an actual social life, which she seemed to have forgotten about somewhere along the way. She tried to smooth down the plucked sleeve while she made her way inside. She wondered if she could get her mum to take a look at it, if she managed to make it to her mum's anytime soon. A potential homicide might mean working through the weekend. Late nights and living off caffeine while they caught the killer. The thought made her smile. She let herself into CID and saw Lightman's head bent over his screen. She wondered how long he'd been here, and whether he did anything else with his life. Whether there were a Lightman wife and kids that he hadn't yet mentioned. He somehow had the look of an unfaithful husband about him. Too pretty, and too closed-­off. Unless that was more her own recent experience warping her expectations. Lightman caught sight of her and gave a small smile. "I got hold of the chief. He's going to need picking up and taking to the crime scene." "On it," Hanson answered immediately. "Where is he?" "Godshill," he said. "He's on his bike." Hanson nodded. She pretended she knew the place well, and that she wasn't about to punch it into her GPS. Two weeks into the job and she basically knew the route from home to the station and the supermarket, and from there to the dockside, where they'd been looking at some potential fraud. She missed the certainty of zooming around Birmingham, where she'd grown up and then worked as a constable for two years. Though she had to admit that the New Forest was a lot prettier. "You'll need this," Lightman said, and lifted a dark-­gray kit bag from the floor. "And despite the time constraints, I'd take him a coffee. He's not going to be that happy at having his day off interrupted." "OK. Just . . . a filter coffee? Not a latte or something?" Lightman laughed. "God, no. Have you not had one of his rants on coffee menus yet?" "No, but I'm sure it'll be great." She put the kit bag onto her shoulder. "OK. Anything else? Do you know what it's about yet?" Lightman shook his head. "Local sergeant will hand over to the chief at the scene. You'll both get a rundown, though if it's not recent, there won't be much so far." Hanson nodded, and tried not to smile. You shouldn't smile at news of a murder, even if it had been ages ago. But the truth was, she was delighted. Hanson was wound up like it was exam-­results day. She gabbled at Jonah about the kit bag and coffee, and then without pausing for breath asked about the remains. Jonah found it somewhere between sweet and irritating. "Ben said they might not be recent," she said. "I'd wait until forensics gave an opinion," he replied, taking a long gulp of coffee. "Most people--­including me--­don't have a clue what age bones are." Having sweated and chilled, he was cold even in the suit he had tugged on in the public toilets at Godshill. Cold, and drifting around his own thoughts of thirty years ago. He had to interrupt her to ask her to turn the heater on. The Fiat veered while she turned the dial, and then steadied. "Sorry," she said. "I'm just grateful you're driving," he said with a slight smile. "The coffee was a good call, by the way. You've given me at least a couple of hours of not being in a really bad mood." "Hmm. A couple of hours. So I've either got to find you a Starbucks before then or get out of the way?" "Pretty much," Jonah agreed. Brinken Wood was suddenly on them. There was a cluster of squad cars and uniforms in the shingle car park. He found it impossible not to remember this place as it had been back then. The car park had all been bark and mud, but it had been just as overrun by police. The haircuts different; the faces somehow the same. Jonah levered himself out of the car once they'd pulled up, taking the coffee cup with him. He felt like he'd gone back in time. So many months had been spent here, searching endlessly. He approached the sergeant. "DCI Sheens. This is DC Hanson." Hanson had been the same rank as the sergeant two weeks ago. But to train as a detective, you had to take what amounted to a demotion, and become a detective constable. He remembered not being sure who was more important when it had happened to him, and wondered if Hanson felt the same. There was sweat along the sergeant's hairline. His eyes were over-­wide and his smile brief and agitated. His police constable, a stocky twentysomething, seemed calmer. Jonah addressed his question somewhere between the two of them: "Who found the remains?" The sergeant answered. "A GP out camping with his family. Well, his daughter, but he called it in." "How old's the daughter?" "Nine," the constable said. "Seems fine, though. It's the father who's taking it hard." "They're still here?" "We've kept them at their campsite. It's not within view of the remains." Jonah nodded, and let the sergeant lead the way, though he knew where he was going. It was where seven kids had bedded down thirty years ago, but only six of them had got up in the morning. Dr. Martin Miller was sitting apart from his family. The doctor's wife was watching the boy play on an iPad. The girl was kicking up dust around the edge of the camp. It was the mother Jonah approached. "DCI Sheens." He smiled at her. He'd had to learn how to smile when his mind was full of complicated, dark thoughts like crazed glass between him and the world. "Would you mind if I talk to your daughter for a few minutes?" "Jessie!" It was a call from the father. His voice was high-­pitched and irritable. "Stop kicking like that. You're making a mess." The girl was halfway upset and halfway rebellious. She scuffed over to her mother and Jonah, sat down quickly, and looked up at him, her knees up near her chin. The mother slid an arm round her in a brief hug. "You don't mind talking to the police, do you, Jessie?" she asked her daughter. Jessie shook her head. "We don't need to ask much," Jonah said steadily. "Just a few details about what you found." "Sure." "She doesn't know anything," her slightly older brother interrupted scathingly. The disdain of older siblings had always seemed uniquely intense to Jonah. He glanced over at the boy, who was now watching them both a little sullenly. He thought about asking him to move away, but decided to let him be. He crouched close to Jessie. "So, a few questions for you." The girl gave him another wary look, and then her gaze wandered away and she picked up a pebble, threw it off to the side, repeated it with another. "Jessie, for goodness' sake!" The father again. Much closer. "Stop throwing things, and look at the policeman when he's talking to you. This is important." Jonah tried to smile up at the doctor. "It's OK, don't worry." "Jessie!" Jonah might as well not have spoken. The girl gave her father a truculent look, and then did her best to look up at Jonah through her straight brown fringe. Jonah tried not to become irritated at the father's interruptions, which had nothing to do with helping the police, he thought, and everything to do with control. "Are you an inspector?" Jessie asked quietly. Jonah grinned. "I am. Detective chief inspector, in fact." Jessie's eyes were still a little wary. "So you're in charge?" "Yes." She seemed happy enough with that, so he went on. "Could you tell me what you were doing when you found the bones?" Jessie glanced at her father, and then said quietly, "Hiding." Jonah saw the mother grimace, but she didn't try to deny it. "Hiding can be fun," he said. "That hollow under the tree. That was already there? You didn't have to dig it?" Jessie shook her head. "I just got in and sat down. There was something poking me, so I pulled it out." Jonah nodded. "Naturally. And it came out easily?" "Yes. I thought--­I thought it was a root, and then maybe a plant because I grabbed a handful. But then I realized it was a finger." "Well done," he said, nodding. "Not everybody would have realized." Jessie nodded, gave a small smile, and stood up. Her mother pulled her into a brief hug. "I'd like them not to talk to their school friends about this for a few days," Jonah said to Mrs. Miller, once she'd let go of her daughter. "It's OK, they're not seeing any for a few weeks. We thought we'd carry on the trip, but somewhere else." Privately educated kids, he realized. They were already on vacation, a good month before the state schools broke up. "Good. It would be better if this wasn't talked about just yet." "Of course." He heard Dr. Miller's footsteps. "Are we done? It's a beautiful day and I don't think we have much to add." "Yes, we're all done. Thanks for your patience." Jonah stood, and the doctor was already giving his children orders to get packed up. He hurried them over to the tent, and Jonah found himself watching until Mrs. Miller rose and began to pick up a few half-­eaten packs of raisins and a cup. "I'm sorry your vacation got interrupted," he said. Excerpted from She Lies in Wait: A Novel by Gytha Lodge All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.