Pubblicato in Italia con il titolo L’Indizio. Margot Lewis è un’insegnante di una scuola superiore di Cambridge e scrive per la colonna Cara Amy del giornale locale. Un giorno tra le sue lettere arriva quella di Bethany Avery, una bambina scomparsa diciassette anni prima. Nella lettera, Bethany chiede a Margot di liberarla dall’uomo che la tiene prigioniera e così Margot comincia ad investigare.
The novel opens in Cambridge where a young girl, Katie Brown, is kidnapped in the middle of the night. A few weeks later, the police thinks that Katie has simply run away from home, but one of her teachers, Margot Lewis, is not so sure. Margot is a high school teacher and she is also the person behind the Dear Amy column in the Cambridge Examiner. Newly divorced, her life revolves around her jobs and her students.
One day, she receives a letter from Bethany Avery, a young girl who disappeared seventeen years earlier. The girl asks Margot to find her and free her from the man who keeps her imprisoned. Although the letter seems legit, the police is not sure what to make of it, so Margot starts to investigate on her own and with the help of criminologist Martin Forrester.
Her investigation soon turns into an obsession and the more Margot investigates the more a dark truth comes to light leading Margot to think that the man who had taken Bethany all these years ago may be behind Katie’s disappearance.
I am going through a period of reading psychological thrillers written by women and with strong women as characters. The choice is involuntary and random, but I am really enjoying this genre so far.
This novel is engaging, dark, and intense and I got to a point where I questioned Margot’s mental state. At times, the story gets unrealistic and improbable, but, despite this, the plot is still captivating.
I liked how the author says the story from different points of view: Margot, the predator, and his victims. I also liked how the author gets into the characters’ minds, focusing on their psychology, their actions, and the reasons behind them so that the characters feel more realistic than the story itself.
With a few surprising and shocking twists this novel that will keep you glued to the page!
