The Prisoner

In Paris’s latest thriller, a London woman’s trip from rags to riches and back again is a tense fight against a wealthy man who can’t be denied his out-of-control wishes. The tale alternates between two timelines. In the present, readers find Amelie Lamont kidnapped and trapped one floor above her husband, Ned Hawthorpe, who’s also kidnapped and whose rich father doesn’t seem too interested in getting him back. While they wait, Ned makes clear that he’s his stone-cold father’s son, telling the kidnappers that they can go ahead and kill Amelie as it will make his father cough up the money. The past timeline, which takes place several years earlier in the 1990s, shows how Amelie got into this nightmare, starting when her widowed father died and left her homeless. She finds her way to a job at a magazine, with Ned the boss. Desperate for money for college, she makes a startling deal with the rich man, one she immediately regrets. Both Amelie’s time in her dark prison and the lead up to it are psychologically reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room, portraying the intense inner machinations of a woman pushed to the brink. But this web of fear and lies is much more complex, satisfyingly so, than Room, involving many more characters, intricate plotting, and layers of subterfuge. Paris’s fans won’t be disappointed and readers new to the author will be hooked.