The Final Child by Fran Dorricott

I would like to thank Lydia from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – 7th September

Price – £8.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook

He won't forget her...

Erin and her brother Alex were the last children abducted by ‘the Father’, a serial killer who only ever took pairs of siblings. She escaped, but her brother was never seen again. Traumatised, Erin couldn’t remember anything about her ordeal, and the Father was never caught.

Eighteen years later, Erin has done her best to put the past behind her. But then she meets Harriet. Harriet’s young cousins were the Father’s first victims and, haunted by their deaths, she is writing a book about the disappearances and is desperate for an interview with the only survivor. At first, Erin wants nothing to do with her. But then she starts receiving sinister gifts, her house is broken into, and she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched. After all these years, Erin believed that the Father was gone, but now she begins to wonder if he was only waiting...

Crime is an interesting genre for me. In fiction I enjoy the puzzles, social commentary, and interesting characters but true crime leaves me cold with it’s focus on the culprits and the gruesome details and most of the time the victims being forgotten. Crime fiction does the same, but I can tell myself it is not real but fascinating my reactions to it. When I read Fran Dorricott’s tense The Final Child I was pleased to find that this was a story that mixed a haunting mystery with watching the impact on two women brought together. In the 1990’s the UK was haunted by a killer known as The Father who every few years would take a pair of siblings from their beds and in the weeks or in one case months later bodies would be found although not all of them to date. But in the last pairing a few weeks late Jillian was found in woods later alive, bloodied and without any memories while her brother Alex was never seen again.

Erin used to be known as Jillian and has worked hard to bring distance between her childhood and lost brother. Her life is shuttered, and she is wary of people discovering her past as they tend to see a victim and a juicy story not a person. Her last relationship has imploded as she never told her girlfriend too much about her past. Harriet was a cousin of the first siblings to vanish and be killed. Her family has been in the shadow of this story. It’s always been around her and she felt powerless to help. This story got her into journalism and investigation though never gave her the confidence to make it her professional, but she has decided to write a book about the children and their families. She thinks she has discovered an early crime The Father committed but never was connected with and starts to meet the families again. Erin starts to feel constantly watched and the two women need to learn to trust each other as danger gets nearer.

This story has a truly terrible mystery at the heart of it dealing openly with the disappearance and death of children but pleasingly Dorricott puts the families and victims at the heart of the tale. This is the story about consequences as both women realise that their lives have been tainted by this experience one directly and one indirectly. We see families broken; people stuck in their pasts and with Erin and Harriet two women both quite unconnected from the world. Erin in armour of make-up and combat clothes while Harriett lives in a sparse home without many personal touches. A crime that stretches 25 years can really destroy many lives and I was impressed how this was demonstrated and how police and the random public are shown never to understand that pain.

The mystery of the Father himself is also a powerful mystery. There appear to be no pattern in his choices of victims and how he went into full homes at night stealing two children. Putting the pieces together of Erin’s memories and flashbacks to an strange unhappy home give the reader quite a bit to work through making the final resolution surprising and dangerous. This is aided by an escalation in strange events around the families as a feeling for being watched escalates to strange gifts being left in people’s homes that bring back memories of the missing children. It leads to uncomfortable suspicion in the reader that more is to come and when it does the stakes for the two women will be raised higher. I would perhaps have liked the last act to move a little faster to build up more rising tension but the review of the personal impact on the characters was worth it. By both choosing to get involved in the case Erin and Harriet start to face their pasts and discover their own attraction to one another pulling them further together. Erin the spiky but ultimately caring person who wants to heal the damage done (but never talk to anyone) is well balanced with Harriet the analytical one who also wants some justice for the families, and they make a compelling couple ad they get into more danger.

The Final Child is a great autumn chiller that you can get yourself into a comfortable chair and then start to feel very uncomfortable at every strange noise around the house. Dark, tense and yet a story with heart and compassion for those left behind in terrible events it is an intelligent thriller worth a look.