September 2020

DON’T LOOK FOR ME is my fourth Bets On selection from Wendy Walker. People often ask me who to compare Wendy to, and I never can answer that straight out. Her books look at a psychological issue and delve deeply into it, which drops them into the zone of psychological suspense. But I find them to be sharper than a lot of offerings in this genre. They are rooted in topics that are not often addressed in thrillers. Here it’s “walking away,” something that actually happens with women as they abandon their marriage and head to build a new life for themselves without telling anyone where they have gone. Often when this occurs, there are children in the picture.

In DON’T LOOK FOR ME, Molly is ready to walk away from her life. She has tragically lost a child, feels disconnected from her family, and thinks that walking away would be the best plan for them. The family could move on without her. As she ponders this, her car runs out of gas; with a storm brewing, she is happy when someone pulls to the side of the road and offers her a ride. There’s a young girl in the truck, and she’s smiling. What could go wrong? From the moment the car door locks, you know everything might go wrong. And it does.

We end up in a remote farmhouse with Molly in one storyline, and it’s a place where she’s not safe. In a second storyline, Wendy bring us a few weeks into the future; Nicole, Molly’s daughter, feels like something is wrong. She doesn’t think her mom would just walk away. She also feels a bit complicit in Molly leaving. She knows that she had a hand in the loss of her sister, and she has been rather tough on her mom these past years. So she heads out to find her.

Readers see the story from both points of view, and the suspense builds with every page. There are near-misses to finding Molly. There are dark moments. There are lots of surprises for the reader.

It’s a classic Wendy Walker story --- a thriller that will bring you along for a very crazy ride, but also will make you think!