The Straitjacket

A young woman disappears. A year later, in a vacant lot, a body turns up.

But before that — long before — there's another story. A relationship that ends, a breakup told by the one who caused it, and a friend who arrives, right on time, to hold the pieces together.

No one suspects her. She's the first to cry, the first to help, the one who has, for every question the investigator asks, a reasonable answer and a useful theory. She is, in short, the best friend anyone could ask for.

Until a text message, almost identical to a line of comfort, changes a single word. Until a phrase said with love starts to sound, read twice over, like something else.

The Straitjacket is a novel about care that, without anyone noticing, becomes the quietest trap of all.

...No one found the straitjacket...until they stopped searching for a body...