Behind the Red Door

Boston social worker Fern Douglas, the 32-year-old heroine of this harrowing if credulity stretching psychological thriller from Collins (The Winter Sister), reluctantly returns to her New Hampshire hometown to help her retired professor dad pack for a move to Florida. She’s bracing for the inevitable bad memories, in particular the times he duped his affection-starved only child into unwittingly serving as the experimental subject for his research into the psychology of fear. Fern’s trip coincides with the highly publicized hunt for missing 34-year-old Astrid Sullivan, the bestselling author of Behind the Red Door, a memoir about her teenage kidnapping ordeal in nearby Foster, N.H. Fern initially has nightmares, then she experiences what feel like flashbacks as she reads Astrid’s memoir. She becomes convinced their pasts are connected and, if she could only remember more, she could help rescue Astrid. Though Collins plays her cards carefully to maximize suspense, with a couple of jokers thrown in, the plot builds to an unsurprising resolution. Genre veterans will find nothing new. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)