Hide and Secrets

Cat Mooney is aged fourteen. She lives with her Mum who works as an astrologer for individual clients and who used to appear on a morning TV show. In this remembered fame her mother still basks, while Cat finds it an embarrassment. Cat’s sister Bess is aged seven. She has been selectively mute for eighteen months since the death of the girls’ father.

The day after renting a cottage on their land to a single father and his son, Cat receives a message from an unknown telephone number. The caller is Rik, who was a friend of her late father. Rik claims that Cat’s father is still alive. He is on the run from a criminal gang who believe falsely that he has stolen something from them. Cat must find her father and warn him about the criminals without anyone else knowing what she is doing. Can she achieve her aim? What secrets will she unearth as she tries?

McKenzie has written a thriller that moves at an electrifying pace. Although the reader is on Cat’s side as the story unfolds, the reader’s perception of who is a criminal and who is a victim will change. The bedrock of the narrative which does not fail to touch the reader is the relationship between Cat and her sister. Readers should be warned. Be prepared. There is a plot twist designed to keep them gasping at the end of every chapter, a twist that had this reviewer in its grip at every turn.