Bloodhound

Aidan Lowther has let himself into eleven thousand houses. He is the locksmith you ring at two in the morning in Carlisle, and he has never once walked into his own house and found it changed. Not until the night in October when the back door was open, the dog was shut in the front room, and his wife was lying at the foot of the yard steps with the gate open to the lane. The police call it a robbery that went wrong. They have a name, no evidence, and nothing else. Four months later his daughter gives him Lantern: a companion built from Ros's messages, her voice notes, her photos, the walks she logged with her old search dog. It talks like her. It swears at the radio like her. And every morning it brings forward one thing she left unfinished, so they can finish it together: a vet's appointment, a complaint about the van heater, a message she never sent. Then the unfinished things start to have dates on them. The twenty-third of October. Two thirty. Four ten. Nine. Aidan knows locks. He knows the back gate only opens from inside. He knows the dog did not bark. And he knows, the way you know a key is wrong before it reaches the pins, where the trail is going to end. He would give anything for the voice to be wrong. A tender, unbearable suspense story about a man, a dog, and a family secret, from the author of The Last Update and Proximity.