I have heard great things about this author’s work, so I will have to give her another try-but this one unfortunately, was a MISS for me! Her narrative at the start was a bit much and seemed more like a chaotic day in the life of rather than the mystery of Samantha Ellis.

I completely understand the bone-tired state that she operates in, having experienced it myself way back.I think Mary could be the lead in more books and I’d love to see how the author would continue to evolve her. Overall it was an okay read, but I felt that as a lawyer Mary should have been a little more savvy than to go blindly into this and Tim, while being the best character in the book, was I felt under explored in his story. I found it not so believable that she was a lawyer, since she didn't really seem to know anything about the law.

Although the characters were irksome, they were representative of what law enforcement deals with on a regular basis…people (witnesses) who think they know more than they really do!Some of the missing people were believed to have been captured by the paramilitaries, while other people believed that the missing people had decided to run away. However, I am just not convinced that a woman up to her eyes in nappies, breast feeding, toddler tantrums and professional self-doubt would have the energy or the inclination to put a great deal of time and effort into sleuthing, given all that she is juggling!

A chilling story of two sleep deprived strangers coming together to find a missing person, not knowing whether they can trust their minds. And life becomes a constant revolving door of meeting each childs' needs one after the other after the other after the other.They both appear to have witnessed a woman being savagely attached in a nearby house that is supposed to be empty as it is being renovated. Was it a figment of their imagination, or was this a result of some kind of sleep induced hallucination? The author had tried to make Tim interesting with his background in journalism and jet-setting around the world, but he too came across as boring. Tim is a journalist on sick leave but still keeping his ear to the ground, and Mary is a frustrated mum on maternity leave. That awful watching of the clock and counting down how many hours you have left to sleep only to finally drift off half an hour before you have to get up is soul destroying.

They meet one sleepless night and witness what appears to be a violent attack on a young woman in a neighbouring house. For some reason I found the pace a bit slow but in saying that, once it gets going then there were certainly a whole host of red herrings, twists and turns that you just don't see coming. Two strangers meet in the middle of the night in a park in London: Mary, who has a baby and a toddler who keep her awake most nights and Tim, who hasn't slept since a nightmarish experience has left him traumatized. I've read a few of Clare McGowan's back library and found them excellent thrillers so started this one anticipating another great read.Both of them see something suspicious in a neighbor’s house and think it might be linked to the disappearance of a local teenaged girl, but they can’t be sure. There were times when I found it quite a struggle to carry on, but I hate not finishing a book, so I made sure that I got there in the end. She ran the UK’s first MA in crime writing for five years, and regularly teaches and talks about writing. Here Mary meets Tim who also cannot sleep and has alot of demons in his past and is suffering from PTSD after what happened to him in the park. The mother reluctantly awake with her baby in the depths of the night gave me vibes of Celia Fremlin's classic The Hours Before Dawn (and if you're a fan of domestic psychological thrillers and haven't read Fremlin, you really should).