Woman Last Seen

by Adele Parks

Overview

"Yet another stick of literary dynamite from Adele Parks: chilling, gripping and entirely unputdownable." —Lisa Jewell, New York Times bestselling author

HAPPY. MARRIED. MISSING.

Leigh Fletcher: happily married stepmom to two gorgeous boys goes missing on Monday. Her husband, Mark, says he knows nothing of her whereabouts. She went to work and just never came home. Their family is shattered.

Kai Janssen: married to wealthy Dutch businessman Daan and vanishes the same week. Kai left their luxurious penthouse and glamorous world without a backward glance. She seemingly evaporated into thin air. Daan is distraught.

Detective Clements knows that people disappear all the time—far too frequently. Most run away from things, some run toward and others are taken but find their way back. A sad few never return. These two women are from very different worlds. Their disappearances are unlikely to be connected. And yet, at a gut level, the detective believes they might be.

How could these women walk away from their families, husbands and homes willingly? Clements is determined to unearth the truth, no matter how shocking and devastating it may be.

#1 Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks returns with her most provocative, compelling book to date.

Don't miss Adele's next book One Last Secret!

Check out these other gripping novels by Adele Parks:
I Invited Her In
Lies, Lies, Lies
Just My Luck

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778312048
Publisher:	MIRA Books
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	197,864
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Adele Parks was born in Teesside, North East England. Her first novel, Playing Away, was published in 2000, and since then she's had seventeen international bestsellers, translated into twenty-six languages. She's been an ambassador for The Reading Agency and a judge for the Costa Book Awards, and is a keen supporter of The National Literary Trust. She's lived in Italy, Botswana and London and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, son and cat.

Editorial Reviews

03/21/2022

This uneven domestic thriller from British author Parks (Just My Luck) opens with a woman bound to a radiator in a darkened room, uncertain of where she is or how she got there. The scene shifts to the London home of management consultant Leigh Fletcher; her husband, Mark; and Leigh’s two school-age stepsons. She has failed to return from a business trip, and Mark, at the urging of his sons, calls the police. After learning that Mark and Leigh argued on the eve of her trip, Detective Constable Clements believes that the disappearance may simply be a family dispute—that is, until she’s assigned the case of another missing woman, Kai Janssen. Kai is childless and married to a young, handsome, and wealthy Dutch businessman. Though the two women seem to have led very different lives, Clements believes the two cases are connected. Those who enjoy reading about obtuse husbands, irritating children, and put-upon wives will be entertained, but the overly melodramatic machinations of the villain, whose identity becomes clear early on, and a vague ending will disappoint most. This is not Parks at her best. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Chilling, gripping and entirely unputdownable" — New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell

From the Publisher

09/01/2021

Back when he was the junior member of a CIA action team (and known as Sierra Six), Court Gentry, a.k.a. the Gray Man, helped messily eliminate a terrorist leader who now appears to be very much alive; next in Greaney's No. 1 New York Times best-selling series. In Hood's Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Transgression, the continuation of a recently launched series, Adam Hayes is asked by his CIA Black Ops program to set up a safe house and is the only survivor when the mission is blown. Dedicated to helping others after having escaped from a shadowy black box program aimed at creating assassins, Evan Smoak, a.k.a. Orphan X, has a new mission in Hurwitz's Dark Horse: rescue the kidnapped daughter of Texas drug overlord Aragon Urrea (200,000-copy first printing). In Jance's Nothing To Lose, retired police detective Beaumont is asked for help by the son of his former partner Sue Danielson, who was murdered years ago by her raging ex-husband. Johansen gives us a big, new Killer View of Jessie Mercado, a Southern California private investigator who surfaces regularly in the "Kendra Michaels" series he writes with his mother, Iris Johansen. In the Edgar Award-winning Kanon's Cold War Berlin-set The Berlin Exchange, two U.S. students and an MI5 operative are being quietly traded far from Checkpoint Charlie for physicist Martin Keller, who had been imprisoned in the UK and now wants to see his ex-wife and son—but what do the East Germans want from him? (125,000-copy first printing). Wending their way through City of the Dead, Kellerman stalwarts Alex Delaware and his buddy, Det. Milo Sturgis, discover a naked, bled-out young man in the streets and a trail of blood leading to the nearby home of sliced-up Cordelia Gannett, an internet influencer Alex knows. Multi-award-winning Northern Irish writer McKinty follows up the New York Times best-selling, Paramount Pictures-ready The Chain with The Chase, so obviously of interest that we won't even worry about the absence of plot details (150,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Mezrich's The Midnight Ride, fresh-from-prison Nick Patterson sneaks into a hotel room on an obligatory job to find his fence dead and scared-witless MIT student Hailey Gordon hiding out after having been caught counting cards; added to this mix is a U.S. history professor's discovery of an unsettling secret about the Revolutionary War (75,000-copy first printing). A domestic-thrills author with 20 Sunday Times best sellers to her name, Parks limns the unaccountable disappearance of two women—contented wife and stepmother Leigh and wealthy, newly married Kai—in cases that shouldn't be linked but seem to be in Both of You (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing).

Library Journal

06/01/2022

British author Parks (Just My Luck) doesn't disappoint with her latest, which centers on two women from very different backgrounds who are reported missing by their husbands around the same time. Detective Clements takes on both cases and feels that they are somehow related. However, it's hard to make a case when there aren't any bodies to examine or evidence of a crime. Each woman could have simply walked away from her life, so it's up to Clements to find out more. Unbeknown to her, there is also a woman who has been abducted and is being held against her will in an isolated, locked room. The characters, storyline, and family dynamics are all believable and ultimately lead to a climactic and realistic ending. VERDICT Although the novel has a slow-burn start, listeners get to hear the investigation unfold through multiple voices and perspectives as the story flashes back to the time before the women went missing, which adds to the suspense of this unique missing-person mystery.—Lacey Webster

Library Journal - Audio