TUESDAY POTPOURRI: “BEHIND CLOSED DOORS”

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by A Daily Rhythm.

Today’s featured book is from an author I enjoy:  Elizabeth Haynes’s Behind Closed Doors is the spellbinding second installment of New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Haynes’s Briarstone crime series that combines literary suspense and page-turning thrills.

 

 

Intro:  (Scarlett – Rhodes, Saturday 23 August 2003, 04:44)

To begin with, nothing was certain except her own terror.

Darkness, and stifling heat, so hot that breathing felt like effort, sweat pouring off her so her skin itself became liquid and she thought she would simply melt into a hot puddle of nothing.  She tried crying out, screaming, but she could barely hear her own voice above the roar of the engine, the sound of the wheels moving at speed on tarmac.  All that did was give her a sore throat.  Nobody could hear her.

She tried listening instead, eyes wide with nothing to see.  She could hear voices sporadically from somewhere else in the vehicle—two different men—but she didn’t recognize them, nor could she understand what they were saying.  She assumed they were speaking in Greek, but the harsh rasp of the words sounded different from the voices she’d heard over the past week at the resort.  Lots of “th” sounds, rolled “r”s, words ending in “a” and “eh.”

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Teaser:  (Lou – Thursday 31 October 2013, 19:03)

Ten minutes later Lou was sitting at her desk, Jason across from her in the only other chair, a low visitor’s chair that had been purloined from reception when they’d redecorated it last year.  The facilities team had a container hidden behind the training school where old furniture went to die, and Lou had gone there herself with Ali Whitmore to try to salvage some desks rather than spend her very snug budget on new ones.

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Synopsis:  Ten years ago, 15-year-old Scarlett Rainsford vanished while on a family holiday in Greece. Was she abducted, or did she run away from her severely dysfunctional family? Lou Smith worked the case as a police constable, and failing to find Scarlett has been one of the biggest regrets of her career. No one is more shocked than Lou to learn that Scarlett has unexpectedly been found during a Special Branch raid of a brothel in Briarstone.

Lou and her Major Crime team are already stretched working two troubling cases: nineteen-year-old Ian Palmer was found badly beaten; and soon after, bar owner Carl McVey was found half-buried in the woods, his Rolex and money gone. While Lou tries to establish the links between the two cases, DS Sam Hollands works with Special Branch to question Scarlett. What happened to her? Where has she been until now? How did she end up back here? And why is her family—with the exception of her emotionally fragile younger sister, Juliette—less than enthusiastic about her return?

When another brutal assault and homicide are linked to the McVey murder, Lou’s cases collide, and the clues all point in one terrifying direction. As the pressure and the danger mount, it becomes clear that the silent, secretive Scarlett holds the key to everything.

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I have loved two other books by this author, so I’m eager to immerse myself in this one.  What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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