A.N. Wilson on crime novels of thrilling intricacy

Experience of lockdown will have made many of us reflect on one of the recurrent urban myths – that of the person taken hostage, possibly forced to live with the captor for years. Victims are usually women, usually blonde, sometimes forced to mother the controller’s children. Romy Hausmann’s debut, Dear Child (Quercus, £12.99; Tablet price £11.69), is an immensely accomplished version of the genre. Some bits are so horrific, I wish I’d never read them. The plot twists are so complex that about halfway through I had to go back to the beginning and start again. To explain the confusion would involve a spoiler. Suffice to say that the story begins with the missing woman being treated in hospital. When her child comes to greet her grandparents in the hospital corridor, they have no doubt as to her identity, but when they come to the woman herself, she is not their daughter. The truly brilliant thing about the book is the uncertainty felt by both the reader and the characters themselves about the reliability of experience. Add Asperger’s and possible epilepsy to the mix, and you are in for a ­puzzling but thrilling journey.