A smartly crafted and eminently engaging thriller, The Clearing is a gripping and dark read. The second in a series featuring a forensic specialist, it’s a standalone story with an excellent premise.
In the Gloucestershire village of Cinderfield, a young woman, Maddie, has gone missing. Her sister, Adele, is sure something is amiss but the local police see her and her sibling as unreliable victims; those categorised as troublesome and easier to ignore. But, when the missing person report pops up on Dr Laughton Rees’ search parameters, she sees something else. A pattern of disappearances in the area has emerged – woman who have been swept under the rug and whose cases have been shut without proper due care and attention. Realising the young woman is another such occurrence, Rees makes it her business to discover what is happening and where the victim may have gone.
However, it’s no easy task. The cases of the missing women are tangled up with a strange folktale about the Cinderman; a story of a wraith who haunts the vast woods around the small town. Whilst the folklore is used to explain away disappearances, the real truth behind them is far more sinister. Teaming up with Adele, Laughton begins to dig into the case of Maddie – or, more aptly, the lack of a case. She finds an unwilling Chief Constable full of excuses and a tight lipped local Earl. Moreover, the more she prods, the more trouble seems to find her.
The Clearing is excellently written, especially Laughton. A Doctor in criminology, she’s smart, capable and fairly fearless. There’s her own background, eluded to with revelations about Adele’s troubled upbringing, but also a fierce intelligence that, thankfully, sees her making clever decisions. As she begins to piece things together, the different narrative threads continue to build up the tension along side the larger picture, and it’s a clever device that pays huge dividends as the book draws to its explosive conclusion.
A compelling crime thriller with an exceptional lead character, The Clearing is a perfect summer read. Twisty and tricky in each measure, it’s a riveting, fast, satisfying story.
Review copy
Published by HarperCollins
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