Friday 1 July 2022

Books Read: The Last to Disappear by Jo Spain

A luxury resort. Three missing women. One body.

When young London professional Alex Evans is informed that his sister's body has been pulled from an icy lake in Northern Lapland, he assumes his irresponsible sister accidentally drowned. He travels to the wealthy winter resort where Vicky worked as a tour-guide and meets Agatha Koskinen, the detective in charge. Agatha is a no-nonsense single mother of three who already thinks there's more to Vicky's case than meets the eye.

As the two form an unlikely alliance, Alex also begins to suspect the small town where his sister lived and died is harbouring secrets. It's not long before he learns that three other women have gone missing from the area in the past and that his sister may have left him a message.

On the surface, Koppe, Lapland is a winter wonderland. But in this remote, frozen place, death seems only ever a heartbeat away.

Books Read: Kindle or Hardcover

I'd like to thank Quercus for my copy of The Last to Disappear to review via NetGalley.

The Last to Disappear is set in Koppe, a fictional town in Northern Finland, which is a popular Winter Wonderland tourist resort. But underneath the picture perfect image there is a murky secret as over the years there have been several missing women, the most recent of which is Vicky, an English girl who was working as a tour guide in one of the tourist hotels. 

When news that the body of a young woman has been found in a frozen lake Alex, Vicky's brother, flies over to see if it's his sister and to discover what had happened that led to her death. Not satisfied by how he feel the investigation is going into his sister's death, he sets out to finding answers for himself much to the disapproval of the local police and some of the powerful locals who are not wanting the resort's murky past to threaten their future plans for the town. 

The story is mainly set in the present day but we also get chapters from 1998 which feature Kaya, one of the other missing woman. The more we get to know about her story, the more we get a picture of a sad and lonely woman who feels trapped and longing to escape. Did she manage to escape and build a happier life for herself? The town's locals have always suspected her husband killed her but without a body and any evidence it's just rumours. But is he also responsible for the disappearance of the other woman and the death of Vicky? 

Local police detective Agatha not only has everyone wanting a quick result into the investigation of Vicky's death but she also has to deal with the fact that Alex is extremely dissatisfied with the information he is being provided so is doing his own investigation creating waves in the resort. But not only does she have pressure at work, she's also got issues in her own personal life that are proving a major distraction. Eventually realising it's better to work together than butt against each other, Agatha and Alex soon discover that there's a lot more going on than first meets the eye and people that you thought you knew have dark secrets that they hoped would never be revealed... 

The Last to Disappear is a chilling, atmospheric read that will have you constantly second guessing as you read between the lines trying to figure everything out. 

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