The Empty Bed
A Novel
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4.3 • 20 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Catherine excels at helping desperate people disappear. But now she must use her unique skill set to find a missing woman in this electrifying novel from the author of The Burial Society.
Eva Lombard is being followed. Or so she suspects. . . .
Eva and her husband, Peter, are in Hong Kong on a romantic getaway from London when Peter wakes up in their hotel room to an empty bed, his wife gone without a trace. His worst fears are confirmed: Eva wasn’t imagining things. Suddenly, he finds himself the number one suspect in his wife’s disappearance, trapped in a foreign country with no one to turn to. He calls his boss, Forrest “Holly” Holcomb, who enlists the help of Catherine, his ex-flame and the enigmatic operator behind the darknet witness-protection program known as the Burial Society.
As a favor to Holly, Catherine sends her team of highly trained Society members on a dangerous chase through Hong Kong to find Eva—while Catherine takes care of pressing business at home. Not only is she tasked with a mission in Mexico City, protecting a family that knows too much from a vengeful pharmaceutical company, but an FBI agent tracking down the missing wife and child of a charismatic businessman is about to come dangerously close to exposing the Society’s secrets.
In these intertwining story lines that converge in unexpected ways, not everyone is who they appear to be—and not everyone who is lost wants to be found.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Sadowsky's entertaining sequel to 2018's The Burial Society, British investment firm CEO Forrest "Holly" Holcomb asks his ex-lover, Catherine, who heads an organization that helps people disappear, to look into a situation in Hong Kong, where Holly's employee Peter Lombard recently took his wife, Eva, on an anniversary vacation. Peter woke up in their hotel room one morning to an empty bed and Eva gone without a trace. Catherine sends two of her best agents, the spunky Stephanie Regaldo and the no-nonsense Jake Burrows, to Hong Kong to track the missing woman. Alternating narratives build suspense as it's revealed that Eva and Peter's marriage is anything but happy, and, despite fears that Eva was being followed, she may have disappeared voluntarily. Stephanie and Jake's search takes them through a variety of colorful Hong Kong locales, from seedy brothels to sophisticated cybercaf s. A subplot involving an FBI agent's attempts to locate a wealthy businessman's missing wife and son seems superfluous, but hints at a story line for next time. Readers will look forward to the third installment.
Customer Reviews
Another brilliant thriller
The Empty Bed picks up where The Burial Society left off. Catherine, an operative for said Burial Society, makes a practice of helping people escape their lives. Mostly women who are in bad marriages - and by bad, I don’t mean unhappy, but truly bad, marriages where they are beaten or threatened or living with monsters. Catherine helps them escape and become whole new people. New names, new identities, new lives. What she does is dangerous, and sometimes deadly, but she believes in it wholeheartedly. ‘
In this novel we meet two new operatives, Stephanie and John. Catherine is training them to work on their own, and in their own way, they are teaching her a thing or two. Both are coming from tragedy in their own lives. Perhaps that is what leads them to want to work for the Burial Society. Perhaps in a way they are adrenaline junkies. Regardless, they have chosen this path.
Peter and Eva are a thirty something couple living in London. Peter works in high finance. Eva has given up her journalism career to start a family, only she can’t seem to get pregnant. So now Eva spends her days walking her dog Baxter and shooting photos of whatever she fancies. Peter finds time for her when he can. So when Peter proposes a surprise trip to Paris for their anniversary, Eva is a bit skeptical. She’s just not sure what to make of his sudden attentiveness.
Magali is an FBI special agent. She has worked her way up the ranks and is about to depart for undercover training. But she has one last case to clear off her plate, the disappearance of socialite Betsy Elliot and her son Bear. Of course the husband is the prime suspect, but Magali definitely doesn’t see it that way. How does a prominent wife and her six year old son just vanish off the face of the earth with no trace? Magali is going to make it her mission to find out.
Just as with The Burial Society, I couldn’t put this one down. I stayed up way past my bedtime two nights in a row to finish it and find out what happens to all these people in this crazy, twisty, turny novel. Sadowsky is a master of suspense, taking you to the brink and then switching the story to an alternate point of view. Each character has layers to unpack, each layer bringing new revelations.
I couldn’t wait for this follow up to The Burial Society, and as with some sequels, you often don’t know if they will meet your expectations. Not this one. Sadowsky surpassed all expectations I had for book number two. Now I have to wait, anxiously, to find out what happens with Stephanie, John and Catherine, and what “burials” they have in store next.
4.5 stars
This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com on 14 January 2020 .