I always feel a breathless anxiety when I spot a faded, dogeared poster on streetlights or community notice boards begging for information about missing relatives. You know the sort of thing, Have you seen my mother? I wonder about the stories and the people, behind those posters. Lost souls possibly roaming the streets. I want to think that maybe they are making a new life, but how easy is that to do? Are they stuck between here and there, present and vanished, living and dead? I imagine they are because who walks away from their life and doesn’t cast a glance back over their shoulder? Then my mind spirals somewhere darker still. What if they didn’t walk away? Maybe they were dragged against their will. Furthermore, what of those left behind? How can they ever be resigned to a loss of someone so vital?
I used to find myself turning away from these heart-breaking posters. Afraid to catch the eye of the missing person who is stuck forever in the moment that the snapshot was taken, instead of living, breathing, moving, among their communities, as they should be. However, I came to realise that we owe those missing people and their families our attention and I forced myself to look. I started scouring faces in crowds trying to spot people I had seen on the posters. Writing WOMAN LAST SEEN came from that instinct to acknowledge someone else’s mystery and pain. My psychological thriller gives the hundreds of thousands of missing my attention through the story of two women who have vanished.
WOMAN LAST SEEN is set in the week running up to the first lockdown in Britain. What a peculiar, disconcerting time that was for all of us, globally. We had no idea what we were facing, or how we would manage. Everyone had their own domestic dramas to solve, everyone felt losses, felt cheated and frustrated. I channelled all of that into my characters in the novel. At times the characters are lonely and isolated, literally lost in some cases but they also determined, resilient, focused on the future and certain that things will get better. All emotions are helpful in the book writing process. I’ve used lockdowns to explore how it feels to be restricted and thwarted.
WOMAN LAST SEEN is a twisty psychological thriller about two seemingly happily married women that both go missing in the same week. Leigh Fletcher, a loving and conscientious step mum to two gorgeous boys goes missing on Monday. Her husband Mark says he knows nothing of her whereabouts, he appears devastated. Kai Janssen is married to wealthy Dutch businessman, Daan, vanishes the same week. Kai left her luxurious penthouse and glamorous world. She seemingly evaporated into thin air. Daan is distraught. The detective in charge of the case knows that people disappear all the time – far too frequently. These women are from very different worlds, their disappearances are unlikely to be connected. And yet, at a gut level, the detective believes they are and is determined to find out the truth no matter how shattering.
Adele Parks was born in Teesside, North-East England. Her first novel, Playing Away, was published in 2000 and since then she’s had 20 international bestsellers, translated into twenty six languages. She’s been an Ambassador for The Reading Agency and a judge for the Costa. She’s lived in Italy, Botswana and London, and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, teenage son and cat. Her newest thriller, WOMAN LAST SEEN, is out now.
