Critical Incidents: The gripping new thriller from the bestselling author of Before We Met - Tapa dura

‘I loved Critical Incidents. In fact I devoured it. It's a brilliant combination of superb characterisation, humour and galloping plot: her best yet’ Susie Steiner, author of Missing, Presumed

‘I swallowed this riveting literary thriller whole; Lucie Whitehouse has the knack of making fictional crime seem uncannily close to home, and Critical Incidents is her best book yet’ Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said

‘Whitehouse is a superb storyteller, whose sleight of hand and sly misdirections have you leaping to all the wrong conclusions from the outset’ Independent

‘Whitehouse writes marvellously in an emotionally hypersensitive, lyrical, Maggie O'Farrell sort of way’ Daily Mail

‘Whitehouse is a skilful, attentive writer’ Guardian

A missing girl.

A murdered friend.

No one left to trust.

‘Seriously good suspense ... trust me, you’ll need to know what happens’ Lee Child

‘Superb characterisation, humour and galloping plot’ Susie Steiner

‘This is that deeply satisfying thing, a strong, deft thriller with real depth’ Tana French

Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.

Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.

In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.

Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?

As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.