Behind Closed Doors by Carol Wyer

Today I am delighted to join the blog tour for the brand new, stand alone thriller from Carol Wyer, Behind Closed Doors. I’m a real fan of Carol’s work and it’s always an absolute pleasure to tuck into one of her books. My thanks to Zoe-Lee O’Farrell for the tour invite and to publisher Thomas & Mercer and Carol Wyer for the advance copy of the book. Here’s what it’s all about:

About the Book

Two kidnappings, thirty years apart. Can Stacey face her own dark past in order to save her stepdaughter?

When Stacey’s ex-husband turns up on her doorstep begging her to help save his kidnapped thirteen-year-old daughter, Lyra, the terror is all too familiar. Stacey’s own violent kidnapping thirty years ago was never solved, and while a severe case of amnesia spares her from recalling the specific horrors, she remembers enough…

Stacey knows her father never paid the ransom—she has the missing pinkie finger to prove it. She knows she was only saved because of an anonymous tip-off to the police. And she knows her captor was never apprehended.

Lyra’s kidnappers have made it clear the police must not get involved. But Stacey can’t shake the eerie similarities between the two cases, and she’ll use whatever she can, from her journalistic powers to her shady contacts, to save Lyra from the same nightmare. Desperate to find any link between Lyra’s abduction and her own, Stacey forces herself to revisit her forgotten, traumatic past for clues.

But can she make sense of the terrible secrets she unearths in time to save Lyra? And if she does, is she ready to face her own tormentor?

My Thoughts

Well Carol Wyer has done it again. Created a novel that is packed with suspense, mystery and a constant sense of threat and foreboding. From the harrowing opening scenes in which we readers are given a very clear picture of what is to come, to the way on which she slow builds up a very complex and tangled tale of kidnapping and revenge, it is the kind of story that grabs your attention from the very beginning and, by the end, has the heart thumping at quite the pace.

While this is billed as a stand alone novel, the central protagonist, Stacey, is the kind of character I could see putting in a repeat appearance. As a journalist, even one whose whole life centres around Morecambe, there is a lot for her character to give, and although not necessarily known as a hotbed of crime, I’m sure that Morecambe could be nursing more than one of two dark and twisted secrets. Between her and her friends, Investigator Ashraf and former Police Officer, Penny, I can just see them battling for the sake of good all over again. Stacey was a brilliant character, one I enjoyed spending time with and despite some awkward moments where hers and Ashraf’s past came to the fore, they work really well together. Stacey is damaged, not your typical have a go hero, for reasons that become very apparent in the first few chapters, but she is also determined and not one to back down from a challenge. Just as well given what comes to pass.

This is a story of a kidnapping, that of Stacey’s step-daughter Lyra. Her ex-husband, Jack, begs Stacey for help in finding his daughter, and with the kidnappers demanding no police involvement and an eye-watering sum of money as a ransom, it really feels as though the pair might be out of their depth. Now there are many reasons why I didn’t quite trust Jack, and some of the decisions he makes are definite eyebrow raising moments. There is that sense of desperation in him, understandably given the circumstances, but Carol Wyer has done a great job in creating a kind of uncertainty around him, making me want, and by extension Stacey, to keep him at arms length.

This is a dual timeline story, the action moving seamlessly between Stacey’s future, and her past, which may well hold the key to what is happening and how to find Lyra. Her mind is like a locked room, and we join her as she tries to break down the door that is preventing her from accessing all important memories. The author keeps us all in suspense, holding back all important details until just the right moment to make the most impact, and the revelations from Stacey’s past, particularly surrounding her relationship with her father are both heartbreaking and jaw-dropping in equal measure. The pacing ebbs and flows, but there is always that underlying sense of urgency – the literal ticking clock that could be the difference between life and death for poor Lyra.

Another cracking, high stakes, high tension thriller from Carol Wyer that will keep you turning those pages quickly, right to the very last, gobsmacking revelation. Prepare yourselves for one heck of a a ride.

About the Author

Carol Wyer is a USA Today bestselling author and winner of the People’s Book Prize Award. Her crime novels have sold over one million copies and been translated into nine languages.

A move from humour to the ‘dark side’ in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and proved that Carol had found her true niche.

In 2021, An Eye For An Eye, the first in the DI Kate Young series, was chosen as a Kindle First Reads. It became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK, USA and Australia. Since then, two further books in the series have been published, with a fourth and fifth due out in 2023.

A standalone psychological thriller, Behind Closed Doors, will be out later this year and is available to preorder now

Carol has had articles published in national magazines ‘Woman’s Weekly’, featured in ‘Take A Break’, ‘Choice’, ‘Yours’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ magazines and written for the Huffington Post. She’s also been interviewed on numerous radio shows and on Sky and BBC Breakfast television.

She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband, Mr. Grumpy . . . who is very, very grumpy.

When not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.

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