Welcome to my book review of Into the Dark by Fiona Cummins. I was so excited to receive an advanced reader copy of this book as I loved her previous book, When I Was Ten. This has been on my list for a while, so I have been excited to finally get to this one. But I was, unfortunately, disappointed.
THE PLACE: Seawings, a beautiful Art Deco home overlooking the sweep of the bay in Midtown-on-Sea.
THE CRIME: The gilded Holden family – Piper and Gray and their two teenage children, Riva and Artie – has vanished from the house without a trace.
THE DETECTIVE: DS Saul Anguish, brilliant but with a dark past, treads the narrow line between light and shade.
One late autumn morning, Piper’s best friend arrives at Seawings to discover an eerie scene – the kettle is still warm, all the family’s phones are charging on the worktop, the cars are in the garage. But the house is deserted.
In fifteen-year-old Riva Holden’s bedroom, scrawled across the mirror in blood, are three words:
Make
Them
Stop.
What happens next?
Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former Daily Mirror showbusiness journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy, where she now teaches her own Writing Crime course. She is the bestselling author of five crime thriller novels, all of which have received widespread critical acclaim from household names including Val McDermid, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Martina Cole and Ian Rankin. Three of her novels have been optioned for television.
Rattle, her debut, has been translated into several languages and Marcel Berlins wrote in The Times: ‘Amid the outpouring of crime novels, Rattle is up there with the best of them.’ Fiona was selected for McDermid’s prestigious New Blood panel at the 2017 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, where her novel was nominated for a Dead Good Reader Award for Most Exceptional Debut. A sequel, The Collector, was published in February 2018 and David Baldacci described it as ‘A crime novel of the very first order’.
Her third novel – standalone thriller The Neighbour – was published in April 2019. Ian Rankin called it ‘creepy as hell’. Her fourth novel When I Was Ten, an Irish Times bestseller, was published in April 2021. Into The Dark, Fiona’s fifth novel, will be published in April 2022 and was described by Sarah Vaughan, author of Netflix smash-hit Anatomy of A Scandal, as ‘Complex. Inventive. Twisty. Unsettling.’
When Fiona is not writing, she can be found on Twitter, eating biscuits or walking her dogs. She lives in Essex with her family.
There is a lot to like about this book; it’s a dark and twisted tale about an unconventional relationship between two women and is beautifully written, as was her previous book. The first few chapters are gripping and suck me right in; Julianne Hillier arrives at her best friend Piper Holden’s house to meet her for their usual early morning run. However, when she arrives, Piper, her husband Gray, and their two children are gone, seemingly having disappeared during breakfast. More gruesome still is the message written in blood on their teenage daughter, Riva’s bedroom mirror. Make. Them. Stop.
We then follow the police investigation and know more about the characters and their lives. There are plenty of clues and red herrings, things jump around a little from events before and after the Holden’s disappearance, but it’s easy to keep track.
While the first part felt a little slow, I did enjoy it, and it held my attention. It wasn’t as engrossing as I first thought, but I was desperate to know what happened and whether it was what I had suspected. However, it didn’t manage to hold my attention so well through the rest. Then, unfortunately, there is a turning point. I’m not sure exactly where, but at that point, things got a little beyond realistic and visited a crazy plot that didn’t feel at all believable. I appreciate that this is fiction, but this isn’t fantasy, and I prefer when things at least seem like they could happen even if they are not likely.
I enjoyed the introduction of the new detective, Paul Anguish and the forensic linguist Blue. Unfortunately, the police investigation felt very insignificant, and we don’t see much of these two exciting characters, and what we see is a little flat. There are some enticing revelations about Blue and Anguish, but they don’t lead to an entire storyline which was a real shame. The whole police investigation appeared to have very little consequence to the story, aside from a tiny DNA aspect.
I didn’t connect to any of the characters and felt that they could have been more fully developed. Their friendship felt unlikely, with an underlying ‘long game’ approach, which I just couldn’t imagine in my head at all. I enjoyed the final twist, but it felt like it was too little too late and not fully developed enough.
I noticed this was written during the lockdown, and Fiona Cummins states that she struggled to write in the circumstances. I wonder if this is what has caused a book that isn’t as good as her previous one. Indeed, it was a tough time for all of us. I only hope that it doesn’t affect her going forward. I will look forward to trying a new novel from her back to her previous form.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a free advanced reader copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review.
Also, see my review for When I Was Ten
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| Title | Into The Dark |
| Author | Fiona Cummins |
| Series | N/A |
| Format | eARC |
| Page Count | 331 Pages |
| Genre | Family Life Fiction |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
| Release Date | 14th April 2022 |
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