First Lines Friday

Photo by Thought Catalog on Pexels.com

Welcome to First Lines Friday, originally hosted by Reading is my Superpower.

Instead of judging a book by its cover, her are the first few lines which I hope will make you want to read this book.

These lines are from a book I am currently reading from my local library – a ‘purely for pleasure’ read.

<i>Thirty years ago, in a village in East Anglia where the land is swallowed up by mudflats and marshes and a hard wind blows in from the sea, a woman went missing.</i>

Do you like what you’ve just read?

Does it make you want to read more?

These are the opening lines of Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French.

A nerve-tingling and atmospheric thriller from master of suspense Nicci French about two families shattered by tragedy and the secrets that have been waiting decades to be revealed.

On the day of Alec Salter’s fiftieth birthday party, just before Christmas 1990, his wife Charlotte vanishes. Most of the small English village of Glensted is at the party for hours before anyone realizes Charlotte is missing.

While Alec brushes off her disappearance, their four children—especially fifteen-year-old Etty—grow increasingly anxious as the cold winter hours become days and she doesn’t return. When Charlotte’s coat is found by the river, they fear the worst. Then the body of the Salters’ neighbor, Duncan Ackerley, is found floating in the river by his son Morgan and Etty. The police investigate and conclude that Duncan and Charlotte were having an affair before he killed her and committed suicide.

Thirty years later, Morgan Ackerley, a successful documentarian, has returned to Glensted with his older brother Greg to make podcast based on their shared tragedy with the Salters. Alec, stricken with dementia, is entering an elder care facility while Etty helps put his affairs in order. But as the Ackerleys ask to interview the Salters, the entire town gets caught up in the unresolved cases. Allegations are made, secrets are revealed, and a suspicious fire leads to a murder.

With the podcast making national news, London sends Detective Inspector Maud O’Connor to Glensted to take over the investigation. Resented by her mostly male colleagues, she has no tolerance for either their sexism or their incompetence. And she will stop at nothing to uncover the truth as a new and terrifying picture of what really happened to Charlotte Salter and Duncan Ackerley emerges.