The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard

 

Young women are disappearing in Ireland and after a year the police still have no clues so the sister of one of the women decides to walk alone in the dead of night to try and trap the killer herself.

Fans of Catherine Ryan Howard will be aware of how twisty her novels are, I'm pleased to say The Trap is no different. I frequently say that when I've finished a novel I want to go back and reread because of all the twists. Well, with The Trap I went straight back and reread chapter 1 as soon as I'd finished.

The novel opens with a scary scene of a young woman walking along country roads late at night. We slowly learn that her sister had disappeared a year ago. When a stranger pulls up in a car the tension immediately intensifies; this is the moment she's been waiting for. Everything about the scene makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your skin crawl. 

As the second chapter opens we learn about Lucy and her sister Nicki, Nicki has been missing for a year. Lucy is frustrated that the police and media did not take her sisters disappearance seriously. The police only launched an investigation when a pretty seventeen year old girl disappeared but have not found any of the women or have any clues about their abductor. 

I had so much empathy for Lucy, you really got the impression that her life was in limbo. She is desperate to know what has happened to Nicki. She knows it won't bring her peace but it will conclude the endless torture of not knowing if she's alive or dead. 

Every so often we get a different narrator. We hear from the abductor as he explains how everything started, a chance encounter that set him on the road to abducting women. Then there is a female narrator, a woman determined to get out of the derelict room she's in but fearful of angering someone. These voices leave you apprehensive about what is going to happen.

The conclusion brings all the various threads together, with a number of twists that turn the whole story on its head, hence my need to go straight back to the beginning and reread the opening chapter. The author also gives some details about the real-life case that inspired the novel, unfortunately that story doesn't have a conclusion.

The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard will be published on 17th August 2023 in hardback. ebook and audio version will be published on 3rd August 2023. My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for a review copy.