The Island of Lost Girls

The idyllic Mediterranean isle of La Kastellana is fictional, but much of what transpires there is all too real in this disturbing thriller from Edgar winner Marwood (The Poison Garden). The three-decade-hopping narrative starts in July 1985, when London-based tycoon Matthew Reade docks his yacht in La Kastellana, planning to develop the unspoiled setting into “the New Capri,” and his bored 13-year-old daughter Tatiana seizes on local Mercedes Delia, just a few months younger, as the plaything she must secure for the summer. This proves a devil’s bargain for Mercedes, who remains trapped in a web with Tatiana and her father into adulthood as a powerless witness to the abuses inflicted on the barely legal beauties they groom for the delectation of Matthew and his cronies. Meanwhile, an undercover Europol investigation of human trafficking zeroes in on La Kastellana, and in 2016, a desperate British mother arrives on the island in a last-ditch effort to find her runaway 17-year-old daughter. Marwood builds her ripped-from-the-headlines premise into something sprawling and admirably ambitious. The suspenseful results should satisfy readers with stomachs strong enough to handle the gruesome details. Agent: Laetitia Rutherford, Watson, Little. (June)