In The Midnight Hour

Michelle Spring's acclaimed novels of psychological are invariable winners in the white-knuckle sweepstakes. Richly-drawn characters with unsavory motives. Secret sins of the past that snake their way into the unsuspecting present. Atmosphere a reader can step into and feel. Michelle Spring is a master at weaving grand themes into compelling plots. Now, in her astonishing new novel, she ices our veins with a North Sea chill.

Twelve years ago, four-year-old Timmy Cable vanished suddenly from a wild and lonely stretch of East Anglian beach. After a massive police search fails to find a body, the boy is presumed dead.

Now, on a quiet street in Cambridge, Timmy's mother, still wracked with grief, is drawn to a teenage street musician—and feels desperately certain that this tall, blond boy must be her son. Has the long nightmare of loss ended at last? If so, where has Timmy been all these years? And why, whenever the boy is questioned about his past, does he become strangely hostile?

It falls to private investigator Laura Principal to ferret out the truth. Is this young stranger with a badly bruised face truly Timmy Cable? Or is he merely a dangerous interloper, bent on taking the wealthy Cable family for a lucrative ride? And what can explain the trail of violence that begins with his arrival— and ends with murder?

As Laura Principal searches for answers, she confronts a loss that threatens to turn her own world upside down. For Laura, this is a haunting case that reaches its breathtaking climax . . . in the midnight hour.

Michelle Spring grew up in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, later moving to Cambridge, England, where she currently lives with her husband and two young children. Under the name Michelle Stanworth, she has had an academic career that spans two and a half decades, four academic books, an affiliated lectureship at Cambridge University, and, most recently, the Professorship of Sociology at Anglia University in Cambridge. Her first novel, Every Breath You Take, was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Arthur Ellis Award as Best First Novel. She is also the author of Running for Shelter, Standing in the Shadows (another Arthur Ellis nominee), and Nights in White Satin.