![]() “I’ll be back soon,” she said, and she continued moving among the wounded. The police officer gave me a bottle of water so I could wash dirt from my mouth. She had a round face and brilliantly white teeth and her hair was bundled up under her cap. She put her arms around a child who had lost his mother. Later, when I saw myself in the mirror, I had white streaks under my eyes, the tracks of my tears.Īs I sat in the gutter, I watched a young policewoman moving among the injured. Dust had settled, coating everything in a fine layer of gray soot. A pigeon lay nearby, blown out of the sky, or maybe it died of fright. I didn’t know if it was mine.Īround me, shop-front windows had been shattered, covering the sidewalk and roadway with diamonds of glass. My blue-and-white-checked blouse was covered in blood. Apparently I have narrow nasal passages, which is probably genetic, but I haven’t worked out who to blame.Īs I lay on the street, a man’s face appeared, hovering over me. Normally I would have been at school at 9:47 in the morning, but I had a doctor’s appointment with an ear, nose, and throat specialist who was going to tell me why I suffered from so many sinus infections. A guy with a hipster beard was carrying a guitar case decorated with stickers from around the world. Two old ladies were in the side seat, arguing about the price of movie tickets. A tattooed girl with white earbuds under hacked purple hair. I spat grit from between my teeth and tried to remember who had been standing next to me. Looking up through the dust, I wondered what I’d been doing on a London sightseeing bus, which is what it looked like without a roof. I crashed to the pavement as debris and body parts fell around me. A million shards of glass, each catching the sunlight. One moment I was holding on to a pole, and the next I was flying through the air, seeing sky, then ground, then sky. I was standing near the middle doors of a double-decker bus when a bomb exploded on the upper level, peeling off the roof like a giant had taken a tin opener to a can of peaches. I was eleven years old when I saw my future. Robotham’s brilliant ability to render complex characters, both good and bad, keeps readers unsure of whom to trust, “maintain an air of excruciating suspense” ( The Washington Post)-until the very last page. After a bungled break-in and an unsolved murder, Philomena finds herself trapped-with her career, her impending wedding, and her very survival in doubt. Yet the young officer is drawn into Tempe’s world, unsure of what is real or invented. Philomena and Tempe strike up a tentative friendship, determined to protect each other from Goodall, but something isn’t quite right about the stories Tempe tells and the secrets she keeps. Tempe Brown is a bloodied young woman and the mistress of a decorated and intimidating London detective, Darren Goodall. Philomena McCarthy is an ambitious police officer with the elite Metropolitan Police in London, responding to a domestic violence call. ![]() From an author who Stephen King calls “an absolute master” comes a “heart-clutching psychological thriller” ( People) about a young female police officer facing danger on all fronts-from a clever victim of abuse, skeptical colleagues on the force, and even her own father. ![]()
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