It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell

 

Jane Trevally is at loose ends at this point in her life.  She is living in the country in the massive pile of her family's old house which is falling down around her.  Jane has been married several times to rich men and never developed a career.  She knows she needs to sell the estate and find a job but it seems overwhelming.

Then while out walking her dogs one day, they come across a small lost dog.  Jane takes it to the vet and finds out it belongs to a girl who was renting a local VRB0 but the girl has disappeared.  There is a London address attached to the dog's chip so Jane offers to take the dog home.  Her favorite ex-husband invites her to stay in his house while he is overseas and her favorite stepson offers to go with her.  The two go to the address and find a locked gate.  When a man comes to answer them, he takes the dog but insists that he knows nothing about the missing girl who had the dog in the country.

Jane is shocked as she looks at the house.  Once, back in her twenties, she had been picked up in a bar by a charming man.  He offered her a job and insisted that she come with him that night to check it out and meet the family.  When Jane arrives with him, she sees a wife who seems scared and starts to get a bad feeling.  When the man makes her a drink, she finds a way to knock it over and runs out of the house and away.  She has always thought she avoided a disaster that night.

Now here is an unfriendly man and a missing girl.  Jane and her stepson decide to investigate the mystery and discover that the house also contains an elderly woman who would be the wife Jane met that night, the unfriendly man, the missing girl and her brother who ran away to join the circus when he was sixteen.  Surely there is a mystery here to be solved.

Lisa Jewell is one of my favorite thriller authors.  Her characters are always finely drawn and there is lots of psychological background for each.  Jane is a delightful character and I hope Jewell writes more books that feature Jane and her stepson and have them create a detective agency for this next stage of Jane's life.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.