You Will Never Find Me
"'I was totally consumed by ‘You Will Never Find Me’...'"
Synopsis:
Charlie and Mercy’s daughter, Amy is a strong willed girl in her own right. Hardly surprising given who her parents are. Now Amy has turned the tables and thrown down the gauntlet by disappearing from home with a final taunt ringing in their ears: ‘You Will Never Find Me’. Amy’s dare to her parents is all they need to prove her wrong. With their connections how could they fail to find their daughter before she vanishes amongst the London streets?
It soon becomes apparent that Amy is a ‘chip off the old block’ and she has learnt much from her mother and father. Not only has she emptied her bedroom and rid it of all traces of her own DNA, but certain avenues open to Boxer and Mercy turn out to be blind alleys. Trying to figure out Amy’s well-plotted disappearance and well-laid plans, the couple finally get a positive sighting in Madrid. Boxer travels out there to find his daughter has become ensnared in the paws of a vicious drug dealer named ‘El Osito’ – ‘The Little Bear’ and he has certainly got his claws in what Boxer has come to Madrid to reclaim.
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Review:
This second thriller featuring Charlie Boxer and his ex-partner, Mercy Danquah is a dense novel about the trials and tribulations of being a parent. Wilson effectively shows the chasm between parent and child and how these individuals who are so alike can also see matters from entirely different viewpoints. It is Amy’s self-removal from their lives that brings latent emotions to the surface and shines a light on secrets that the two parents have kept in the dark for far too long. Wilson is amazingly adept at slowly peeling back the layers of Charlie and Mercy and showing these unlikeable characters in the raw and turns them in to people you empathise with as they deal with their pain and loss. The author turns their lives upside-down and in the process makes them human with their own inadequacies, something which both have tried their hardest to keep submerged, only for them to alienate their daughter in the process. It would have been all too easy for Wilson to make Amy a spoilt brat, but thankfully he shows a young woman who is confident and yet, misinformed about life . Esme really shone for me in this novel. Charlie’s mother, who due to her own personal history, has always had trouble forming emotional ties – that is until Amy came along and became the light of her life. Her reaction to Amy’s murder is heart-rending and powerful (and to clarify I am NOT giving away a major plot twist here as this novel is so dense and complex). To call this a thriller is to cheapen Wilson’s ‘tour de force’ about this small, dysfunctional group of people who keep each other at arm’s length whilst drowning in their own isolation. I was totally consumed by ‘You Will Never Find Me’ and this level of writing can only be produced by a master of his craft. This is an astonishing and thought provoking novel of the highest order.