One year after escaping her abductor, a woman searches for the girl who didn’t get away in this #1 bestselling forensic thriller laden with grisly details, high tension, and jaw-dropping twists for fans of Riley Sager, Jeneva Rose, and Alex Michaelides. **NOW A DELUXE PAPERBACK with stenciled edges and designed inside covers!** Is she a survivor? Or a liar? The night they go missing, high school seniors Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are at a beach party in their small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. Police launch a massive search, but hope is almost lost—until Megan escapes from a bunker deep in the woods. . . . A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has made Megan a celebrity. It’s a triumphant story, except for one inconvenient detail: Nicole is still missing. Nicole’s older sister, Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole’s body will be found and her sister’s fate determined. Instead, the first clue comes from another body—that of a young man connected to Nicole’s past. Livia reaches out to Megan to learn more about that fateful night. Other girls have disappeared, and she’s increasingly sure the cases are connected. Megan knows more than she revealed in her book. Flashes of memory are pointing to something more monstrous than she described. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you’ve been looking for . . .

チャーリー・ドンリーは本作で、単なる誘拐ミステリーを超えた「生存者の罪悪感」と「真実の多層性」を見事に描き出しています。法医学という冷徹な視点を持つ姉のリヴィアと、断片的な記憶に苛まれる生還者メーガンの対比が、読者の心を激しく揺さぶります。単なる恐怖の追求ではなく、失われたピースを埋めようとする人間の根源的な執着が、物語に重厚な文学的深みを与えているのです。 特に白眉なのは、華やかな生還劇の裏側に潜む「嘘」と「忘却」の演出です。何が真実で誰が真の被害者なのか。洗練された文体で綴られる心理描写は、読み進めるほどに足元が崩れるような戦慄を呼び起こし、最後の一頁まで読者を離しません。この豪華な装丁に相応しい、まさに五感を刺激する極上のサイコスリラーといえるでしょう。