The Wicked Hour
A Natalie Lockhart Novel
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning author of Trace of Evil, a detective dealing with the scars of her past must solve a seemingly unconnected string of murders, and face the impossible question of what to do when the killer may be hiding amongst the ones you know, in Alice Blanchard's The Wicked Hour.
“Readers will welcome a return to Burning Lake with Natalie at the helm.”—Associated Press
“Lockhart is a relatable new heroine on the police-procedural scene, and one who will appeal to readers of Tana French."—Booklist
The day after Burning Lake’s notorious, debauched Halloween celebration, Detective Natalie Lockhart uncovers a heartbreaking scene—a young woman, dead and lying in a dumpster. There’s no clue to who she is, save for a mystifying tattoo on her arm, and a callus underneath her chin. She’s not from around here. No one knows who she is.
As Natalie retraces the young woman’s steps leading up to her death, she uncovers a deeper, darker horror—a string of murders and disappearances, seemingly unconnected, that may have ties to each other—and explain the abrupt disappearance of her best friend years ago.
As she digs deeper within the mind of the hunter, Natalie finds a darkness she could never have imagined. And as she draws closer to the truth, the killer is weaving a trap for her that may prove inescapable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When the naked corpse of a struggling violinist, 24-year-old Morgan Chambers, turns up in a dumpster in Blanchard's disappointing sequel to 2019's Trace of Evil, Natalie Lockhart a detective with the Burning Lake, N.Y., police assumes the crime is a random act of violence, until she learns that another young woman with ties to a local music conservatory recently went missing. The case also causes Natalie to revisit the disappearance of her childhood friend, violinist Bella Striver, who allegedly ran away on the night of their high school graduation. The events of the previous book loom large, affecting Natalie's relationships as well as her mental health; regrettably, Blanchard never provides a plot recap, leaving new readers in the dark. Though the setup is clever, the mystery suffers from a dearth of viable suspects with convincing motives (the killer included), and the action-packed denouement feels preposterous and arbitrary. Fans will hope for better next time.
