‘Come and Find Me’ by Sarah Hilary

Published by Headline,
22 March 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-47224896-1 (HB)

Cloverton is pretty much like any other prison, overcrowded and under staffed. Predictably a riot breaks out followed by a fire and there are many fatalities. In the confusion a notorious vicious criminal, Mickey Vokey escapes. He is serving a sentence for torturing a woman, Julie, in front of her young daughter.

Detective Sergeants Noah Jake and Ron Carling visit Mickey's late mother's empty house where he used to live. They find a room covered in photographs of mainly women all showing expressions of pain.

Also, they are puzzled as to the significance of a hole dug in the cellar. Can it be a grave, it certainly looks like one?

Marnie Rome is appointed head of investigations, and from one of her informers inside the prison, she learns that Mickey was always sketching charcoal drawings, often rather disturbing images of mainly women. However, these drawings together with some letters written to Mickey from women who admired him have gone missing. Suspicion falls on one of the prison guards, a Darren Quayle, who when interviewed seemed to talk about Vokey with hero worship. Could he have helped him escape, is he hiding the drawings and letters? On visiting Darren's mother, they hear from her too how he seemed to admire Mickey. She appears to be scared of her own son.

When Marnie and the team trace the two women who wrote the letters to Mickey, they are not at all as they imagined. Ruth is a very religious person wanting to save him and Lara is a rather fat lady, well to do and not quite all there. Mickey has certainly not visited either of them.

Wherever the team look they can find no sign of Vokey he seems to have completely disappeared into thin air. They are concerned if he is not found soon, he will commit more vicious crimes. He is obviously a very disturbed person and a danger to women; can they find him before he strikes again?

A good book full of unexpected twists and although it is about a rather disturbing person, it is beautifully descriptive and written with real feeling. The narrative created really vivid images and I recommend it.

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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

Sarah Hilary’s debut novel Someone Else’s Skin won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2015. It was the Observer’s Book of the Month, a Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller, and has been published worldwide. Come and Find Me is her latest book published in March 2018. Sarah lives in Bath.

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.