Solicitor Trish Maguire is taking a welcome break from her usual work with abused children – depleted, and coming to terms with a recent miscarriage that she hasn’t even had the opportunity to tell her partner about, the financial case promises less emotional turmoil. When she hears a car braking outside her apartment, though, Trish is plunged into a case involving a child despite her intentions.
The boy injured in the crash has no identification, but does have Trish’s name and address sew into his clothes. Intensely fearful, all he’ll say is that ‘she’ told him to go to Trish. The police are suspicious of Trish, particularly given the strong physical resemblance between Trish and the eight-year-old; recently reunited with her father after some twenty years of estrangement, Trish has her suspicions, too. And when the boy’s mother, who does have a connection with Paddy and was also in witness protection, is found battered to death, the mystery deepens.
Out of the Dark is a fast-paced and involving mystery thriller. The central characters, particularly Trish and David (the young boy), are layered and well drawn, and there are enough plot twists to keep the book interesting without becoming unnecessarily convoluted. The affect of childhood trauma is depicted subtly, and Trish is reflective about this without being annoyingly introspective. Cooper does a good job of conveying a sense of place – I thought there was enough geographic detail to centre Out of the Dark firmly in London without the reader being tiresomely beaten over the head, and the contrasts between different strata of British society were deft and effective. My only caveat, and this wholly my own doing, is that reading the series out of order (see ) made some of the plot less suspenseful. – Alex
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