Beneath the Shadows

The North Yorkshire moors provide the atmospheric backdrop for Australian author Foster’s otherwise unremarkable debut, a suspense thriller. One day after Londoner Adam Lockwood moves with his family into Hawthorn Cottage, a house he inherits in the village of Roseby, he disappears after taking a walk with his baby daughter, Millie. The police suspect that he’s abandoned his family, but his wife, Grace, is convinced that Adam would never have left willingly. After spending a year with her parents in France, Grace returns to Roseby in search of answers. The tight-knit community makes little effort to welcome her, though the town matriarch, Meredith Blakeney, is unusually interested in Hawthorn Cottage. Grace strikes up a friendship with Ben, another apparent outcast in Roseby, who offers to help her with renovations, while she sifts through years of secrets squirreled away in the cottage and the village itself. Foster nicely evokes the isolation of the moors, but the less than surprising reveal behind Adam’s vanishing act fails to satisfy. Agent: Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management. (June)