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S. J. Bolton's latest thriller DEAD SCARED is a nonstop read. Suspense builds from the opening chapter where police investigator Lacey Flint is about to throw herself from a church tower and continues to the book's heart-stopping conclusion. Each chapter after the first takes us back to the days preceding Lacey's apparent suicide attempt, beginning eleven days before. She has been assigned an undercover job. Posing as an emotionally fragile Cambridge student named Laura Farrow, she must learn all she can that might be related to a spat of horrific suicides on the prestigious campus. Students, most of them beautiful young women, have been killing themselves in gruesome ways. In the time leading up to each suicide or attempt, the young woman involved had experienced odd but quite personal psychological and possibly physical attacks. Each suffered from vivid dreams and a sense that her reality had been altered. A few of the women claimed to have been raped, although no physical evidence of this was found. Some disappeared for a few days as well, returning with no memory of where they had been. All of them have an overwhelming sense of fear. Does this mean that they are they being encouraged to kill themselves? Are their deaths being set up for them in some way? Many of the women had some history of mental stress or depression and had been seen by a campus psychiatrist named Evi Oliver. She has her own set of issues related to a debilitating injury she suffered not too long ago that has left her unable to walk unaided and in constant pain. These weaknesses become the focus of what are either real or imagined happenings in her own house. Her bathtub fills up with blood. Pinecones, which scare her, are strewn around her hall. Is someone taunting her, or is she losing her mind and setting these things up herself? She is the only person who knows Lacey's true identity and reason for being on campus. The cover story is that she is Evi's graduate student working on a research project. Meanwhile, Lacey had been placed in a possibly dangerous situation without any real knowledge of what is going on. Her supervisor, Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury, is obsessively concerned about her safety, but he is unable to give her any more information. She cannot help but use her detective skills in trying to unravel the mystery of the suicides, which look more and more like possible murders. Joesbury keeps berating her when she sends him investigative notes, telling her to just be an observer. To protect her, he stays close to her in a nearby hotel, rather than supervise her from London, as she believes he is doing. It is clear they are in love, but each doubts that the other feels the same way. As we learn more information about the cases and who may be involved, possible perpetrators present themselves. S. J. Bolton is clever in her introduction of these culprits. We get some flashbacks to events and people that might be relevant to the current suspects, but it is unclear who the instigator might be in the present. Lacey's cover may be blown, but who is after her? She becomes involved with a handsome local doctor named Nick Bell, whose oddities both attract her and ignite her suspicions. It is not until near the book's end that we learn what is really going on and what the police are really investigating. When we finally are back in the present of Lacey Flint up on the tower, everything that we have learned about the people involved and Lacey herself come into play. In DEAD SCARED, Bolton has written a gripping thriller that does not disappoint. Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, April 2012
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