What You Left Behind

British author Hayes’s superb second thriller featuring Det. Insp. Lorraine Fisher (after 2014’s Until You’re Mine) finds Lorraine looking forward to spending a week visiting her sister, Jo Curzon, and Jo’s 18-year-old son, Freddie, in the affluent English village of Radcote. But Jo has recently separated from her husband, and Freddie is sullen and distant, spending most of the time in his room on his computer. Two years before, Radcote was shaken by six teenage suicides in two weeks. Jo worries that Freddie’s attitude may be a precursor to him taking his own life, perhaps influenced by the recent suicides of two young men, both of whom lived at the New Hope Homeless Shelter. Suspicious about the “cluster suicides,” Lorraine begins an investigation that leads to Sonia Hawkeswell, a wealthy shelter volunteer whose own son committed suicide. Intense character studies, aided by a perceptive look at teenagers united by feelings of alienation, complement the unpredictable plot. [em]Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Apr.) [/em]