First Published: 2016
The first chapter is told from the perspective of a girl who is kept in a wooden box by her abductor, and she is only allowed out of the box from time to time.
The next chapter shows a yougn woman who is in a bar and draws the attention of one of the men at the bar. They dance and drink, and when he asks her to follow her outside, he tries to take advantage of him, and then the bartender appears and hits the man. The woman goes with the bartender, and soon she realises that the bartender is bad news. He forces her into his home, undresses her and ties her with zip ties. When she is left alone, the woman looks everywhere, even in the rubbish bin, and finds some kind of fertiliser in the rubbish and a jug of flammable sustance. So when the man returns, she throws the mixture and he burns to death.
DD is called to the scene, and from the first moment the woman, whose name is Flora, proves to be a challenge. She has called someone from the FBI, a victim advocate. We discover that Flora was kidnapped when she was at university and was released over 400 days later, and she returned a changed girl. Dr Samuel Keynes, was the victim specialist, and over the years she has developed a close relationship with him. What DD understands is that Flora is some kind of vigilante who goes out to catch men when Keynes tells her that before now Flora has called him six more times. The bartender's name is Devon Goulding, and Flora tells DD that she is sure that Goulding has assaulted women before, even a young woman who was kidnapped recently, Stacey Summers. DD finds evidence that he may have hurt other women as there are some women's IDs that he had hidden in a box. But there is no evidence that he has anything to do with Stacey's abduction.
This start is powerful and I think it is going to be a great read.
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