She Lies in Wait

October 15, 2018
On July 22, 1983, bright, beautiful 14-year-old Aurora Jackson, the victim at the heart of British author Lodge’s atmospheric debut, disappeared in Brinken Wood in England’s New Forest. The discovery of her remains 30 years later near the site where she was camping with her older sister and five other schoolmates catapults Southampton Det. Chief Insp. Jonah Sheens back to one of his first—and most haunting—investigations. The secluded location suggests that the prime suspects remain the same tight circle of family and friends who were in the woods that night—a prospect troubling to the enigmatic Sheens for reasons that will only gradually emerge. Lodge smoothly intercuts the present-day police probe by whip-sharp recent transfer Det. Constable Juliette Hanson and other team members with flashbacks to the last day of Aurora’s life as seen through her eyes. In large part due to flip-flops to facilitate the plot, the surviving campers, including a current MP, never become as convincing as the detectives. Nonetheless, this psychological thriller marks a promising start to a planned series. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

December 1, 2018
?There were seven of them, seven teens on a weekend camping trip?Brett, Connor, Daniel, JoJo, Coralie, Topaz, and Aurora. After a night of partying, fueled by alcohol and Dexedrine, six of the teens wake up to discover the seventh, Aurora (Topaz's shy, awkward younger sister) missing. And missing she will stay for the next 30 years until her remains are found buried near the campsite, and it is discovered that she had been raped before dying. Enter Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens, who, 30 years earlier, had been at school with the other teens and who now discovers that the surviving six are still a tight-knit group, though one of them is a rapist and murderer. Ah, but which one? This first in a promised series of Jonah Sheens mysteries is a bit anticlimactic, though the story is neatly plotted and nicely atmospheric. And, yes, there is the obligatory, teasing red herring, but the solution to this British import is plausible and eminently satisfying. Encore, please.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2018

An award-winning British playwright short-listed for fiction awards, Lodge has a huge Wattpad following for her young adult and children's fiction. Here, six women friends who went camping come back as five. When the body of their missing friend is found three decades later, it's clear one of them must be a killer.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2018
When a teenage girl goes missing after a wild camping trip in Lodge's debut thriller, those involved must live with uncertainty for 30 years, until her body is found.Seven teenagers go into the forest in southeast England; only six return. Thirty years later, Aurora Jackson's body is found near the campsite where she disappeared. DCI Jonah Sheens, a young policeman when Aurora went missing and only a few years ahead of her in school, has personal connections to the case; he remembers the first unrelenting rounds of interviews that never turned into leads, and he knows that, with a body in hand, it will be only a matter of time before Aurora's killer is exposed. There were six others in the woods that night--Aurora's beautiful, wild older sister, Topaz; wealthy, connected Daniel; tattooed, volatile Connor; independent tomboy Jojo; childlike Coralie; and handsome star athlete Brett, the newest member of the group. Most of them were drunk and some high, so their recollections of the night have never been clear, but they have maintained their innocence and served as one another's alibis. But time can erode even the deepest devotion and friendship. Lodge alternates chapters between the present day, starting with the finding of the body, and the night of Aurora's disappearance. The characters are presented both as teenagers and then as people in their 40s who have never quite moved on from that terrible night. Sheens and his team are compassionate, clever, and likable, each with a story that will, we assume, be developed in later books. Despite the small list of suspects, the mystery intrigues and twists, offering enough red herrings and moments of police procedural to please fans of the genre.There are already two more DCI Sheens novels in the works--hooray!

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