The Memory Game by Nicci French

 

Two families, the Martellos and the Cranes are best of friends, almost one big family.  The men have been friends since their university days.  They spend summers and holidays together at the Martellos large country estate, bought by the wealth Alan Martello made as an author.  The Cranes have a son, Nick, and a daughter, Jane while the Martellos have four sons and a daughter, Natalie.  

Now, the children are all middle-aged with children of their own and the men are elderly.  Jane has been hired to draw up a guest house for the estate as she is an architect.  Over the years, she has remained close to the Martellos.  One of the sons, Theo, was her first love and she married the eldest son, Claud.  When the girls were sixteen, Natalie had disappeared.  The police thought she had run away as she was dating several men but she never returned.  Now, when the laborers break ground for Jane's construction, they find Natalie's bones.

Jane has recently left Claud as she feels that her life is missing something now that her sons have grown and gone.  She enters therapy to see if she can find out what is wrong and how to move forward with the rest of her life.  As she delves into her past with the therapist, she starts to realize that she knows something about Natalie's disappearance, something she has repressed for twenty-five years.  Does she have the solution?

Nicci French is one of my favorite psychological thriller authors and cannot write a bad book.  This one moves back and forth between the present and the past and delves into the relationships between the two families.  The suspense slowly mounts until there is a startling revelation at the end.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.