Both of You

Adele Parks

HarperCollins, €12.99

Leigh Fletcher is married to Mark, is stepmum to his two sons, has a demanding job and lives a happy but ordinary life with her family on the outskirts of London. When she doesn’t come home from work one day, her husband has absolutely no idea where she could be.

Kai Janssen, married to a very wealthy Dutch businessman, also goes missing the very same week. The very glamorous couple hung out in the right circles and socialised with the right people, but after leaving their luxurious penthouse to go and visit her very ill mother, Kai has seemingly vanished into thin air.

DC Clements is called upon to investigate but with the first Covid-19 lockdown getting under way in London, public interest in the case is at an all-time low and no sightings are reported of either Leigh or Kai.

An experienced detective, Clements knows that as the two women are from completely different worlds it’s unlikely their disappearances are connected, but her gut is telling her differently. With leads in the case few and far between, and both husbands acting strangely, Clements continues digging – until she finally peels back all the layers to reveal the shocking truth.

Both of You by English author Adele Parks is a dark, unsettling and compulsive tale about how far some people will go to get the family they’ve always wanted. This novel completely rips up the rule book on what constitutes domestic noir and propels us headlong into a completely unthinkable but entirely plausible scenario that will make you question your own family life.

Told from the points of view of all the key characters – DC Clements, the two missing women, the two husbands, the best friends and the stepchildren – this psychological thriller offers readers an engaging voyeuristic insight into what’s going on as, chapter by chapter, the plot slowly tightens like a vice until it reaches a dramatic and unexpected crescendo.

Adele Parks prides herself on scrutinising society’s concepts of family and our theories on love, parenting and fidelity. She has excelled at this in Both of You, her 21st novel in 21 years, and fans will now be wondering how she will possibly top this plot in her next book.