Gordon Square by Tracy Martin-Summers is a horror-tinged psychological thriller. This is not the supernatural kind of horror, but one that comes from the hideous cruelty of the twisted mind, which chills the marrow.
The story opens with an endearing, almost idyllic scene of a family's outing. Two daughters with their parents enjoy their lunch at an Italian restaurant, visit the market and drive back home. The older daughter Roberta seems to be precocious and cheeky, but she always has a way of making her father laugh. She is a budding artist, while her younger sister Anika is a talented ballet dancer, chosen for a leading role in a junior production.
This perfect day ends up in a tragic accident.
Fast forward to the present. Detective Sergeant Mike Brugge and his partner Detective Constable Mel Bailey come across a girl, age unknown, in the depths of a blisteringly cold winter's night in Gordon Square. She is frail, malnourished and dirty. Doctor who is observing her reports, "She is lethargic, disinterested, non-compliant... My gut feeling is... that this girl has undergone some sort of physical and mental trauma, so emotionally disturbing that she is in shock and will need professional ongoing support to bring her back... from the place her mind is now taking solace, time out. I feel her mind has slipped away, somewhere dark and unreachable and it may takes months if not years to restore, if at all".
What has happened to the girl? She is completely uncommunicative, non-verbal and presents a total mystery.
Mike and Mel are determined to find out where she might have come from, if anyone is missing her, and to try help her, but they don't even have a name to work with. So, they name her Jane Gordon, after the Square where she was found, for the purposes of documenting their findings.
"The problem we have", says Mike, "is that we have nothing at all to go on. We don't know her ethnic origin or her age, albeit she looks somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five, and is Caucasian, but she could be much younger. She is so malnourished, it's difficult to determine if she's even gone through puberty". She's so pale she may have been kept in the dark.
They are doing house-to-house enquiries, as well as research each household and their owner's history and past to find out if anything has been flagged, but that is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Then another victim is found in the same circumstances. Same age group, not speaking, lethargic, dirty.
The investigation team are hoping for a breakthrough. Mike feels certain they will soon get some answers.
To accelerate progress with the patient, doctors decide to put Jane under hypnosis. Mike is sceptical and has reservations as to whether it's real, but the team observing two girls explain to him that it's a complicated process and needs skilful handling. "It can be very painful emotionally for the patient and you need to know where to draw the line at each session". They need something to work with and help them come to terms with, ultimately, to heal.
Hypnosis reveals harrowing details from the girls' past. The pain these girls suffered is unimaginable.
The detectives are about to uncover the most unspeakable cruelty inflicted upon the victims, which has spanned for decades.
On top of the investiagtion, the detectives have to deal with their own tragic events, which bring them even closer together.
Gordon Square is a terrifyingly dark study of the family relationshios and the brittleness of the human mind, a heartbreaking tale of memory and loss.
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Author Bio –
Tracy was born in Harrow Weald, Middlesex in 1964, growing up in a loving family home. She married her first husband in 1990, has two grown up children and a granddaughter.
She studied a variety of topics via module learning, embarking on City and Guilds and NVQ courses, ranging from a brief spell in hairdressing to administration and now works for a utility company in North West London.
Tracy has numerous hobbies consisting of landscape painting to landscape gardening and always likes to paint the scene, even if it’s changing the colour scheme, yet again, within her home.
Tracy has always enjoyed writing and used to write short stories for her own children's amusement but it has only been in the last few years that she has taken this more seriously and has gone on to write her first debut crime detective Novel called Gordon Square.
Tracy Married her second husband in 2014 and now lives in Bedfordshire in a sleepy hamlet where she writes whenever she gets a spare moment.
My website is:
www.tracymartinsummers.co.uk and www.tracymartinsummers.com
This book review is part of the blog tour, you can check out what the other book reviewers thought of this book, following the route.
Many thanks to Tracy Martin-Summers and Rachel's Random Resources for my copy of the book!
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