Into The Dark by Fiona Cummins

When Julianne Hillier turns up at her friend Piper's house for their pre-arranged weekly run there's no-one home. The whole family, mother, father and two teenage children are missing. It's as if the family were simply plucked from the kitchen in the middle of breakfast. Phones are on charge, school bags at the door and the family cars are on the drive. When the police arrive they notice spots of blood on the chandelier and discover a message scrawled in blood on a mirror in a bedroom. Have the family run from trouble or has something more sinister happened?

This is a story full of intriguing characters. No-one is quite as they seem and everyone has at least one secret they are hiding. As the story develops we begin to see how some of the characters and situations are manipulated by others, like a chess player setting up an attack.

The story isn't relayed in a linear fashion. We move regularly between days before the disappearance and days after the disappearance, along with the perspective of different characters. This constant shifting keeps the reader unsettled, constantly guessing about the who, the why and the how.

After numerous twists in this page turner the reader is still left, intentionally, with one or two unanswered questions. 

I particularly enjoyed a couple of the "minor" characters; Saul Anguish and Dr Clover March. Whilst they played essential roles in the storyline both characters have so much more to offer. Hopefully they will feature in their own spin-off.

Into The Dark by Fiona Cummins will be published on 14th April 2022 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for a review copy.