What happens next by Kate Hamer

In my debut novel ‘The Girl in the Red Coat’ (published in 2015) Carmel is kidnapped by a religious cult when she was just eight years old, as they believed she had healing powers. We follow her journey as she struggles to hang on to her sense of identity while under immense pressure to take on an identity that was not hers, while her desperate mother searches for her.

While I was writing the book I didn’t know if a anybody would ever read it, let alone that it might be published. The response was as unexpected as it was overwhelming. When it charted as a Sunday Times bestseller I had to face one of my greatest fears – being asked to appear in public! What I hadn’t realised is that with any book that does well there’s an audience wanting to meet the author in book clubs and festivals up and down the land. As someone who had been too shy to do a reading in the school assembly this was terrifying. The first one was Cheltenham Literary Festival, an event I’d been to as an audience member to soak up some of my favourite writers. Now, here I was. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking, I actually thought I was going to fall over on the steps on the way up to the stage. Yet, somehow with the help of my editor and a generous chair I got through it.

I was so glad I did, because if I’d given up at that first hurdle I’d never have got to meet the wonderful crime readers at events all over the country, not to mention fellow authors. I have heard whispers that the nicest authors are the crime writers and the more grisly the books the nicer they are. I’m not sure if this is true but it’s amazing how the panel often was great fun, and something miraculous happened – I started to enjoy these events! 

I soon realised that my very favourite bit was the audience questions at the end. It was always interesting and unexpected and it confirmed my belief that once a book is published and ‘out there’ in the big, wide world it really doesn’t belong to me anymore, it belongs to the readers. I’ve had questions about the writing process, about character’s lives ‘outside’ the book, about tiny details I’m amazed that anyone picked up on, but the most frequent question was, ‘Are you going to write a sequel?’ or even, ‘When are you going to write a sequel?’ 

Well, it took a long time. I wrote other books, ‘The Doll Funeral’ and ‘Crushed’. Yet somehow the seed planted by readers took root. The characters in that first book began clamouring again, especially one – a little girl called Mercy who has the briefest of all appearances in the first book – I felt emerge so powerfully, wanting to tell her story, wanting everyone to know what had happened to her.

So over two long years I wrote ‘The Lost Girls’ and now it’s here in glorious technicolour. In the book, after a five year long ordeal Carmel is returned to her mother Beth, but of course nothing can ever be the same again. The family might crave to return to normal but the longer Carmel is home the more she begins remembering, digging into what happened – despite the fact her that her traumatised mother is desperate to move on and never have to talk about it again. Carmel begins to remember dreadful things that make her blood run cold – and starts to ask herself the question: what happened to the other lost girls before her? The novel is her quest to find out. 

In fiction, we’re made to believe that the crime is resolved when the case is solved, but more and more I pondered on the aftermath. What about the effect of the crime, many years later on. How has it changed relationships, life paths? How has it blown people off course or make them take directions they never would have if the crime had gone uncommitted? That’s what I wanted to explore here, alongside Carmel turning detective herself, reclaiming her power and her own life story by exposing what happened to others.

I loved meeting the characters from the first book again, feeling them live and breathe once more and give a voice to others that seemed to be waiting in the wings in the first book. In fact, I think I may now be hooked on writing sequels!

The Lost Girls by Kate Hamer (Faber & Faber) Out Now

Lost, she narrowly escaped disaster. Beth is desperate to return to normality. After a years-long ordeal, her daughter is finally home and safe. But Carmel has questions she can't ignore about the cult that kidnapped her, and about the preacher who gave her another girl's name. Found, she must survive a miracle. Digging into her past, Carmel uncovers secrets which suggest that she wasn't the only lost girl - and which puts her in danger all over again. While her mother struggles to salvage the safety they've only just found, Carmel tries to come to terms with who she has become. One question, a mystery at the heart of her disappearance as a child, haunts her: What happened to the other lost girls?

You can find more information about Kate Hamer and her books on her website. You can also find Kate Hamer on Twitter @kate_hamer

Books to Look Forward to from Faber and Faber

January 2019

The second book in the Rebekah Roberts series - a taut mystery and a brilliant exploration of the demons we inherit... Aviva Kagan was just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish

life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida. A few months later she was pregnant, engaged to be married and trapped in a life she never imagined. So, shortly after the birth of her daughter she disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from, NYC tabloid reporter Rebekah Roberts, wants nothing to do with her. But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, NY contacts Rebekah about his young wife's mysterious death, she is drawn into Aviva's old world, and a hidden culture full of dangerous secrets and frustrations.   Run You Down is by Julia Dahl.

February 2019

In a hard-boiled city of crooks, grifts and rackets lurk a pair of toughs: Box and _____. They're the kind of men capable of extracting apologies and reparations, of teaching you a chilling lesson. They seldom think twice, and ask very few questions. Until one night over the poker table, they encounter a pulp writer with wild ideas and an unscrupulous private detective, leading them into what is either a classic mystery, a senseless maze of corpses, or an inextricable fever dream . . . Drunk on cinematic and literary influence, Muscle is a slice of noir fiction in collapse, a ceaselessly imaginative story of violence, boredom and madness.  Muscle is by Alan Trotter

The Elegant Lie is by Sam Eastland. The year is 1949. In the bombed-out ruins of Cologne, Hanno Dasch is king. Director of the most successful black market operation in post-war Germany, Dasch has kept his clients supplied with goods so extravagant and rare that they were almost impossible to find even at the height of Germany's conquests. Nobody but Dasch, his enigmatic daughter and the war criminal he keeps as his bodyguard know how he

does it. None of this has escaped the attention of Allied Intelligence, who face not only the systemic corruption of a country where everything is in short supply, but the growing threat of Stalin's KGB. Fearing that Dasch will soon expand his business to include dealings with Russia, and invite the further meddling of Russian agents in the west, the CIA sets in motion an undercover operation to infiltrate and, ultimately, destroy Dasch's empire. A disgraced American Army officer, Nathan Carter, is recruited to approach Dasch and to ingratiate himself with promises of stolen army supplies. As Carter moves further and further into the labyrinth of Dasch's world, it soon becomes clear that the black market ring has already been compromised, but by someone even more dangerous than the Russians. Carter stumbles upon a counterfeiting ring, with whom Dasch has unwittingly gone into business, which seems to have been created with the sole purpose of destroying the Soviet economy, something it could easily do with the superlative quality of the forged bills it is producing. With Carter caught in the middle, and facing the danger that his cover might be blown at any moment, a race begins between the Russian and American spy agencies to uncover who is responsible, before the situation escalates to war.

March 2019

'

They had a secret, the two of them, and there was no better way to start a friendship than with a secret.' When Hen and Lloyd move into their new house in West Dartford, Mass., they're relieved to meet, at their first block party, the only other seemingly-childless couple in their neighbourhood, Matthew and Mira Dolamore. Turns out they live in the Dutch Colonial immediately next door. When they're invited over for dinner, however, things take a sinister turn when Hen thinks she sees something suspicious in Matthew's study. Could this charming, mild-mannered College Professor really be hiding a dark secret, one that only Hen, whose been battling her own problems with depression and medication, could know about? Lloyd certainly doesn't seem to believe her, and so, forced together, Hen and Matthew start to form an unlikely bond. But who, if anyone, is really in danger?   Before She Knew Him is by Peter Swanson.

Former Broadway star Tommy Jump isn't getting the roles he once did; as his final run as Sancho Ponza draws to a close, Tommy is getting ready to give up the stage, find a steady paycheck, and settle down with his fiancee. Cue Special Agent Danny Ruiz. An old school friend of Tommy's, now with the FBI, Ruiz makes Tommy an offer that sounds too good to refuse. All Tommy has to do is spend six months in prison, acting as failed bank robber 'Pete Goodrich'. Inside, he must find and befriend Mitchell Dupree, who has hidden a secret cache of documents incriminating enough to take down New Colima, one of Mexico's largest drug cartels. If Tommy can get Dupree to reveal where the documents are hidden, the FBI will give him $300,000. More than enough to jumpstart a new life. But does he have what it takes to pull off this one final role?  The Last Act is by Brad Parks.

April 2019

A Good Enough Mother is by Bev Thomas.  The hardest lies to spot are the ones we tell ourselves. Dr Ruth Hartland rises to difficult tasks. She is the director of a highly respected trauma therapy unit. She is confident, capable and excellent at her job. Today she is preoccupied by her son Tom's disappearance. So when a new patient arrives at the unit - a young man who looks shockingly like Tom - she is floored. As a therapist, Ruth knows exactly what she should do in the best interests of her client, but as a mother she makes a very different choice - a decision that will have profound consequences.

The Better Sister is by Alafair Burke.  For a while, it seemed like both Taylor sisters had found happiness. Chloe landed a coveted publishing job in New York City. Nicky got married to a promising young attorney named Adam McIntosh and became a mother to a baby boy named Ethan. But now, fourteen years later, it is Chloe who is married to Adam. When he is murdered at the couple's beach house, she has no choice but to welcome her estranged sister - her teenage stepson's biological mother - back into her life. When the police begin to treat Ethan as a suspect, the sisters are forced to confront the truth behind family secrets they both tried to leave behind in order to protect the boy they love, whatever the cost.

Mercy River is by Glen Erik Hamilton. When Van Shaw receives a distress call from his fellow Afghan War veteran, Leo Pak, he has to leave the urban hazards of Seattle to head far south to a town called Broken Ridge, deep in the wild heart of rural Oregon. Leo faces charges of murdering a local gun dealer, and while Van doesn't doubt his friend's innocence, he knows he faces conviction. As Van starts his own covert investigations, the small town is suddenly awash with Army Ranger veterans, converging for a raucous annual Rally. Was it only this reunion that brought Leo to town? Or is someone at the Rally setting Leo up to cover for their own dark designs?

May 2019

Phoebe stands on Pulteney Bridge, tights gashed from toe to thigh. The shock of mangled metal and blood-stained walls flashes through her mind as she tries to cover her face so she won't be recognised. It wouldn't do to be spotted looking like this. She's missing a shoe. She feels sick. Phoebe thought murder and murder happened. Thoughts are just thoughts, they said. Now she knows they were wrong. At home, Phoebe arranges the scissors and knives so they point toward her mother's room. She is exhausted, making sure there's no trace of herself - not a single hair, not even her scent - left anywhere in the house. She must not let her thoughts unravel, because if they do, there's no telling who might be caught in the crossfire, and Phoebe will have to live with the consequences.  Crush is by Kate Hamer

The Paris Diversion is by Chris Pavone.  Kate Moore - a mother with an interesting past - is living the quiet life in another European city, or trying to. On her way to drop her children off at school in the city centre, the cafes and streets of Paris start to come alive around her. Kate's husband Dex, meanwhile, charged with finding a particular present for their son's birthday, is struggling to focus on the job in hand as a financial matter at work seems to be playing on his mind. As worrying reports begin to circulate from key locations around the city, and the sound of wailing sirens becomes increasingly hard to ignore, could their day and, indeed, their lives be about to change forever?

Books to Look Forward to From Faber and Faber

January 2018

When a brutally murdered man is found hanging in a theatre, Detective Sergeant Rex King becomes obsessed with the case. Who is this anonymous corpse, and why has he been ritually mutilated? But as Rex explores the crime scene further, the mystery deepens, and he finds himself confronting his own secret history instead. Who, more importantly, is Rex King? Shifting between Holborn Police Station, an abandoned village in rural 1980s France, and Stonehenge's Battle of the Beanfield, The Fountain in the Forest transforms the traditional crime narrative into something dizzyingly unique. At once an avant-garde linguistic experiment, thrilling police procedural, philosophical meditation on liberty, and counter-culture bildungsroman, this is an iconoclastic novel of unparalleled ambition.  The Fountain in the Forest is by Tony White.

City Without Stars is by Tim Baker.  The only thing more dangerous than the cartels is the truth...In Ciudad Real, Mexico, a deadly war between rival cartels is erupting, and hundreds of female sweat-shop workers are being murdered. As his police superiors start shutting down his investigation, Fuentes suspects most of his colleagues are on the payroll of narco kingpin, El Santo.  Meanwhile, despairing union activist, Pilar, decides to take social justice into her own hands. But if she wants to stop the killings, she's going to have to ignore all her instincts and accept the help of Fuentes. When the name of Mexico's saintly orphan rescuer, Padre Marcio, keeps resurfacing, Pilar and Fuentes begin to realise how deep the cover-up goes.

The Doll Funeral is by Kate Hamer.  My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I don't say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw. Or that I'm a hunter for lost souls. I'm going to be with my real family. And I won't let anyone stop me.

February 2018

When Angela met Jason Powell, while catering a function in the Hamptons, she assumed their romance would be a fling. But, Jason, a brilliant economics professor at NYU, had other plans, and they married the following summer. The marriage meant a fresh start, a chance for Angela and her young son to move to Manhattan where no one knew of her tragic past. Six years later, her husband has become a successful and celebrated liberal figurehead, but when a college intern and then another woman come forward with allegations against him, their perfect life begins to unravel. Jason insists he is innocent, but Angela is forced to ask how well she ever really knew her husband, and if she can afford to stand by him and risk her own past being revealed.  The Wife is by Alafair Burke.

The Blinds is by Adam Sternbergh.  Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. All they do know is   For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her - and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway, it's simmering with violence and deception, heartbreak and betrayal, and it's fit to burst.

that they opted into the programme and that if they try to leave, they will end up dead.

March 2018

What kind of woman walks out on her family? Gregg knows. The kind of woman he picked up in a bar three years ago precisely because she had that kind of wildcat energy. And now she's vanished - at least from the life that he and his kid will live. We'll follow her, to a new town, a new job, and a new friend, who thinks he has her figured. So who is this woman who calls herself Polly? How many times has she disappeared before? And who are the shadowy figures so interested in her whereabouts? Sunburn is by Laura Lippman. 

Disaster, Melanie Barrick was once told, is always closer than you know.  It was a lesson she learned the hard way growing up in the constant upheaval of foster care. But now that she's survived into adulthood - with a loving husband, a steady job, and a beautiful baby boy - she thought that turmoil was behind her. Until the evening she goes to pick up her son from childcare, only to discover he's been removed by Social Services. And no one will say why. A terrifying scenario for any parent, it's doubly so for Melanie, all too aware of the unintended horrors of 'the system'. When she arrives home, her nightmare gets worse - it has been raided by Sheriff's deputies, who have found enough cocaine to send her to prison  for years. If Melanie can't prove her innocence, she'll lose her son forever. Her case is assigned to Amy Kaye, a no-nonsense assistant Commonwealth's attorney. Amy's boss wants to make an example out of Melanie, who the local media quickly christens 'Coke Mom'. But Amy's attention continues to be diverted by a cold case no one wants her to pursue: a serial rapist who has avoided detection by wearing a mask and whispering his commands. Over the years, he has victimized dozens of women in the area - including Melanie. Now it's this mystery man who could be the key to her salvation. or her ultimate undoing.  Closer Than You Know is by Brad Parks.

April 2018

On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father.  But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Peter Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry's in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening - will Harry be able to see any of it clearly through his own confused feelings?  All the Beautiful Lies is by Peter Swanson

May 2018

What You Want to See is by Kristen Lepionka.  Shaken by the outcome of her last big case, PI Roxane Weary is keeping a low profile. When she takes on a new client who suspects his fiancee is cheating on him, Roxane is happy to have landed a run-of-the-mill surveillance job. Until, that is, Marin Strasser, the woman she's been tailing, turns up dead.  The police are convinced her client is the one who pulled the trigger. Certain - and scared - that things aren't so straightforward, Roxane starts to follow a paper trail that gets more dangerous the farther it goes. So who really was Marin Strasser? Who could have wanted her dead? And how can Roxane stop her work from once again pushing away the few people she thinks she can trust?

Cold Desert Sky is by Rod Reynolds.  No one wanted to say it to me, that the girls were dead. But I knew.  Late 1946 and Charlie Yates and his wife Lizzie have returned to Los Angeles, trying to stay anonymous in the city of angels. But when Yates, back in his old job at the Pacific Journal, becomes obsessed by the disappearance of two aspiring Hollywood starlets, Nancy Hill and Julie Desjardins, he finds it leads him right back to his worst fear: legendary Mob boss Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel, a man he once crossed, and whose shadow he can't shake.  As events move from LA to the burgeoning Palace of Sin in the desert, Las Vegas - where Siegel is preparing to open his new Hotel Casino, The Flamingo.  With Charlie caught between the FBI and the mob, can he possibly see who is playing who, and find out what really happened to the two girls?

Books to Look Forward to From Faber & Faber

January 2017

 

Her Every Fear is by Peter Swanson. Following a brutal attack by her ex-boyfriend, Kate Priddy makes an uncharacteristically bold decision after her cousin, Corbin Dell, suggests a temporary apartment swap - and she moves from London to Boston. But soon after her arrival Kate makes a shocking discovery: Corbin's next-door neighbour, a young woman named Audrey Marshall, has been murdered. When the police begin asking questions about Corbin's relationship with Audrey, and his neighbours come forward with their own suspicions, a shaken Kate has few answers, and many questions of her own. Jetlagged and emotionally unstable, her imagination playing out her every fear, Kate can barely trust herself. so how can she trust any of the strangers she's just met? 

February 2017

My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. I'm supposed to say that the bruises on my arms and the black eye came from falling down the stairs. But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I don't say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw on the way to bed. I did tell Mick that I saw the woman in the buttercup dress, hanging upside down from her seat belt deep in the forest at the back of our house. I told him I saw death crawl out of her. He said he'd give me a medal for lying. I wasn't lying. I'm a hunter for lost souls and I'm going to be with my real family. And I'm not going to let Mick stop me.  The Doll Funeral is by Kate Hamer.

When a distressed young woman arrives at their station claiming her friend has been abducted, and that the man threatened to come back and 'claim her next', Detectives Carrigan and Miller are thrust into a terrifying new world of stalking and obsession. Taking them from a Bayswater hostel, where backpackers and foreign students share dorms and failing dreams, to the emerging threat of online intimidation, hacking, and control, The Intrusions explores disturbing contemporary themes with all the skill and dark psychology that Stav Sherez's work has been so acclaimed for. Under scrutiny themselves, and with old foes and enmities re-surfacing, how long will Carrigan and Miller have to find out the truth behind what these two women have been subjected to?  The Intrusions is by Stav Sherez

March 2017

On a normal Wednesday afternoon, Judge Scott Sampson is preparing to pick up his six-year-old twins for their weekly swim. His wife Alison texts him with a change of plan: she has to take them to the doctor instead. So Scott heads home early. But when Alison arrives back later, she is alone - no Sam, no Emma - and denies any knowledge of the text ...The phone then rings: an anonymous voice tells them that the Judge must do exactly what he is told in an upcoming drug case and, most importantly, they must 'say nothing'. So begins this powerful, tense breakout thriller about a close-knit young family plunged into unimaginable horror. As a twisting game of cat and mouse ensues, they know that one false move could lose them their children forever. Say Nothing is by Brad Parks.

April 2017

In New Orleans, Texas Ranger John Q is out of his jurisdiction, and possibly out of his depth. It seems everyone in Louisiana wants to send him home, and every time he asks questions there's trouble: from the pharmacist to the detective running scared to the pimp who turned to him as a last resort. Before John Q knows it, he looks the only link between a series of murders. So who could be trying to set him up, and why, and who can he turn to in a city where Southern tradition and family ties rule? Infused with the rhythms of its iconic setting, The Contract is by J M Gulvin.

May 2017

The Quiet Man is by James Carol.  In Vancouver, the wife of a millionaire is dead following an explosion in her own home.  Everyone thinks her husband is responsible, but former FBI profiler Jefferson Winter isn’t so sure.  He method is too perfect; the lack of mistakes, uncanny.  He’s seen a series of carefully orchestrated murders – once a year, on exactly the same day, a woman dies in a situation just like this one.  That date is fast approaching and Winter knows another victim has been selected.  Can he identify the quiet man before he strikes again?

June 2017

Find the boy. Bring him home. Keep him safe. Keira Lynch is a lawyer who's used to trouble, but she's only just landed in Albania, and already, she's neck deep. She thought money would help her find the boy, in an underworld where bribes are as common as bent cops, but his kidnappers want something else. They want the freedom of one of their gang members. A man Keira is about to help bring to trial back in the UK; a man who once put three bullets in her chest. Can she stay silent, and save the boy? Or will she have to play the game in a brutal world where anything can be bartered - trust, loyalty, even lives?  Walk in Silence is by John Gordon Sinclair.