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    Little Girl Lost: A Foundlings Novel
    Little Girl Lost: A Foundlings Novel
    Little Girl Lost: A Foundlings Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Little Girl Lost: A Foundlings Novel

    Written by Wendy Corsi Staub

    Narrated by Hillary Huber

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From New York Times Bestselling Author Wendy Corsi Staub comes a gripping novel of psychological suspense, as a young foundling’s path to her biological parents leads to a killer with a chilling agenda.

    MAY, 1968

    On a murky pre-dawn Mother’s Day, sinister secrets play out miles apart in New York City. In Harlem, a church janitor finds an innocent newborn in a basket. In Brooklyn, an elusive serial killer prowls slumbering families, leaving a trail of blood and a twisted calling card. Cloaked in lies, these seemingly unrelated lives—and deaths—are destined to intersect on a distant, blood-soaked day.

    OCTOBER, 1987

    Reeling from shocking personal discoveries, two strangers navigate a world where nothing is as it seems. Amelia Crenshaw embarks on a search to discover the truth about the birth mother who abandoned her, never suspecting she’s on a collision course with a killer. Detective Stockton Barnes, a brash young NYPD detective, trails a missing millionaire whose disappearance is rooted in a nightmare that began twenty years ago.

    The past returns with a brutal vengeance as a masked predator picks off victims whose fates intertwine with a notorious murder spree solved back in ‘68—or was it?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 24, 2018
    ISBN9780062742032
    Author

    Wendy Corsi Staub

    USA Today and New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels and has twice been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and their two children.

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    Reviews for Little Girl Lost

    3.5/5

    40 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a good, honest-to-God police procedural and none the worse for that. The crimes aren't horror-movie horrific (though pretty unpleasant, it has to be said). The cop isn't some sort of flawed superhuman. The setting is neither weirdly exotic nor overly familiar. There is no straining for effect. There will be no prizes for fine writing, but the writing's fine, especially the scene where the protagonist enters the target's house - this is edge-of-the-seat stuff.There is fear and pity; there is a sympathetic central character; there are refreshingly grey shades of morality; there are interesting relationships at the heart of what is, put simply, just this: a damn good read.
    • 4/5
      DI Lucy Black Is A Bit Different from Other Female DetectivesLittle Girl Lost by Brian McGilloway is set in Derry, Ireland. DI Lucy Black is new to the unit and involved in an abduction case. I liked that Lucy wasn't a hard ass the way many fictional female police are depicted. Still, she makes foolhardy decisions and it's disconcerting that her supervisor does as well. This leads to trouble in a few instances.Lucy is looking after her Father who has early stage Alzheimer's. In an unusual twist, it's the mother figure who is the more remote professional. We gradually discover Lucy's complicated and dysfunctional family secrets.I was instantly drawn into the writing and good pacing in revealing the crime kept me wanting to read. I did find the denouement was a bit too long in the telling, but it was a minor complaint. Little Girl Lost is a readable police procedural and I already have the second book in the series lined up on my Kindle.
    • 5/5

      As I'm sure I'm about to learn with my month of reading Scandinavian crime, there is something dreadfully yet delightfully chilling about a winter crime. It's below freezing outside, there are tracks in the snow... it's eerie and sets the perfect tone for a thrilling story. Little Girl Lost is set in an Irish winter and manages to blend perfectly into the wild mix of chilly thrillers abundant in the marketplace. I've never read a McGilloway before, but I enjoyed this one so much I had best add some more to my ever-increasing list of books to read.

      The jacket of my copy calls it a stand-alone, but I would love to see more of Detective Sergeant Lucy Black. Lucy hasn't had the easiest life; her mother, the Assistant Chief Constable, was more married to her job than her family, and her father is fighting a losing battle with Alzheimer's. Lucy has struggled to make a name for herself without living in her mother's shadow, and her personal life has suffered as a result. Her life changes unexpectedly when a young girl is found wandering through the woods in the middle of a snowy, cold night. The authorities have reason to think it may be missing girl Kate McLaughlin, but upon finding the child they soon realise the girl is too young to be Kate. Upsetting as this may be, what disturbs Lucy more is that no one claims little "Alice", and the girl is too traumatised by her ordeal to speak.

      As the investigation progresses, it becomes apparent that the missing girl cases are linked: Alice has been in contact with Kate, and was found with blood on her that was not her own. When someone recognises Alice, Lucy is able to start piecing the case together. But when her personal connections start to appear in the history surrounding the McLaughlin family, Lucy is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her family. In what truly is a race against time to save Kate, Lucy and her family have to look back over their past one more painful time to get to the bottom of a decades-old mystery that threatens to tear everything apart.

      As adults, we sometimes learn things about our parents that we wish we didn't know. As Lucy comes to terms with bits of her father's past, she is also exposed first-hand to how children in abusive and neglectful families are raised. McGilloway's treatment of fragile family bonds is outstanding - there are so many emotions running throughout the novel, and they are masterfully woven together to create a powerful and poignant novel about how our past defines are future, and the lengths some people will go to to ensure the past stays buried. Overall, a complex thriller that keeps you guessing right to the last page... and a perfect prelude to my upcoming Scandinavian month!
    • 5/5
      Little Girl Lost by Brian McGilloway is a William Morrow publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.DS Lucy Black has been placed on a high profile kidnapping case. When a young girl is found wandering half frozen and has gone mute most likely from her trauma, Lucy finds herself emotionally involved. This case is somehow linked to the kidnapping case which has everyone baffled.If this were not enough stress, Lucy's superior just happens to be her mother with whom she has a less than warm relationship with and she tries to keep all this secret from her workmates just in case someone thinks she is getting special treatment.Add to that, her father is suffering from dementia and Lucy is responsible for his care. He has been increasingly confused and continuously refers to her as Janet. She has no idea who Janet is. As Lucy tries to help the little girl they found and her father and work the missing person/kidnapping case, she makes a few major blunders. But, she also begins trying to uncover who Janet is and this opens up a can of worms that could put everyone Lucy knows in whole new light and Lucy may find herself a target for murder.This is the first book I have read by this author. Originally published in 2011 this book is now available in digital format. Cleverly plotted, perfectly paced, character driven and explosive, I am now a fan. I want more from this author. I love thinking person mysteries. This is a dark, gritty, detective novel with some violent images. There is heartbreak as we see Lucy take some pretty hard kicks from reality both in her job and in her personal life. The story was atmospheric, descriptive of it's Irish setting, and thought provoking. This one deserves an A+
    • 3/5
      First in a series featuring DS Lucy Black set in post peace settlement Northern Ireland. A police procedural set around a kidnapping, Lucy is moved from CID to the Public Protection Unit but solves the case anyway.
      I enjoyed this one and have acquired book 2.
    • 4/5
      I'm reading eBooks again so I apologize to my followers who don't read them. Sometimes the book looks too good to hold out for the paperback edition. That's the case here too.I was caught up in the story immediately. It's set in northern Ireland, in and around Derry. A milk truck gets stuck in the snow and as the driver is looking over the situation, he sees a little girl in pajamas at the edge of the nearby woods. When he tries to approach her though, she runs back into the woods. He can't imagine why she would be there in the cold, so he calls for help. The police have been looking for a missing girl. Is it her? Lucy Black gets the call.When they get the little girl to the hospital, she won't speak. She isn't the missing girl nor has anyone called to say this girl is lost. Meanwhile, her pj top has been sprayed with blood and luminol shows that her hands had been covered with it. She is unhurt, but every time she falls asleep she awakes screaming.Meanwhile, Black has terrible problems at home with her father, a retired cop. She loves him and lives with him to care for him, but unfortunately he has Alzheimer's disease and has reached the point where she'll have to put him in a home. He wanders away from the house and he's becoming violent.The story is a little hard to follow. There are so many characters involved in the two children's lives, and pieces of the puzzle go all the way back to The Troubles. As they search for one child and try to find the identity of the girl in pajamas, Black finds a third little girl in a house of horrors. This one cares for her baby brother while mom gets high on drugs with boyfriend. So many children in harm's way . . . Lucy Black is very emotional coping with it all.It's a great story with well-drawn characters, sad but satisfactory in that you understand why everything is happening.Highly recommendedSource: Witness/Impulse Imprint from HarperCollins
    • 4/5
      a very good Irish thriller, hard to put down.
    • 4/5
      This was a very fast read and held my interest all the way through, although it seemed to come to an abrupt end. Detective Sergeant Lucy Black lives and works in Derry, Northern Ireland, and the location plays an important role in the story. She finds a young girl in the woods and becomes emotionally attached to her, while also dealing with the fact that her father is developing Alzheimers.
    • 4/5
      I was intrigued. Captivated really by the complex, realistic portrayals of relationships, complicated and tangled over years in a smallish community. So many little girls (and women) lost in this book. There were so many questions that I found myself unable to guess at the answers. Heck, I couldn't even believe some of the questions until they smacked me in the face! Well done. Makes me think I may in fact like mystery/thrillers after all! Who knew!
    • 4/5
      This book was slow to start. Having just read C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake's Dark Fire, I was comparing the two books and in particular the plot content, prose and the number of layers within a particular storyline. Initially, I felt that McGilloway's story was a simple single threaded effort. A lost girl is found without an identity & unable to talk. The pace was slow. I continued to read because the book was for a bookclub meeting. However, slowly but surely and without my noticing it, a complex, multilayered and intricate story was being built up. The last third of the book is fast with revelations, deaths, arrests and more arrests and all the incidentals from earlier in the book find their meaning in a well thought out plot. I enjoyed the book...and it's good to see an Irish writer doing well
    • 1/5
      What? How do I start? I couldn’t follow the characters, the time line, the plot. Wasted time.
    • 3/5
      This was a perfect beach read. Every once in a while I like to take a break from the heavier literature I tend to read and enjoy a thriller, this one was pretty good! Scared the wits out of me and I couldn't put it down. Perfect.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars

      This is the first of a series from the author of the well known Ben Devlin books. It features DS Lucy Black, a smart young cop with a full plate. She's recently transferred to Derry to care for her ailing father. A former cop himself, he has Alzheimer's & is slowly disappearing into his own world.
      Lucy has mixed feelings about being back. She grew up here during the height of The Troubles & it had a profound effect on her childhood. After their house was fire bombed when she was 13, her father left town with Lucy in tow. Her mother, also a cop, stayed behind & gave up all contact with Lucy. She's now the ACC in Derry & Lucy's boss. Because she goes by her maiden name, no one is aware of their relationship.
      Lucy starts off in CID working on the abduction of Kate McLaughlin, the daughter of a wealthy local businessman. When a truck driver calls in after seeing a girl in the woods, hopes are high. Lucy responds & rescues her but it's not Kate. Instead she finds Alice, a little girl who is almost catatonic & half frozen.
      She's quickly hospitalized but refuses to speak so Lucy sets out to identify her. To her disappointment she is seconded to the Public Protection Unit that deals with children. Her boss DCI Travers (a man best described by the word "ick!") lets on it's due to the bond she established with Alice but Lucy knows who is responsible...her mother.
      And so begins the investigation. One girl without a family & one father without a child. The plot is complex & deeply rooted in the past. Memories are long in this area & although sectarian violence has largely ended, there are those who still carry grudges. Even Lucy blames the town's history for her shattered childhood.
      As she & her new boss Tom Fleming dig, they discover a connection between the 2 girls that began 15 years ago when a bomb killed Kate's mother. Her father worked that case. As his memory fades, he begins to let slip details of his past that will forever alter how Lucy sees him. But they also contain clues pertaining to the present investigation & when the bad guys are finally all rounded up there are a few surprises in store for the reader.
      The author does a a great job of creating the atmosphere & tension of this small city that was once divided in two. All the characters have been touched by the violence whether it was themselves or a family member & many continue to harbour secrets. Some of them are obviously villains but there are enough red herrings & hidden agendas to keep the reader guessing as to the motives of others. It's only as the author slowly reveals the past that we understand what is going on now.
      I really enjoyed this. The characters are well described & dialogue is tight, giving the book a smooth flow & even pace. History about The Troubles in this area (where it all began) is interesting & evocative, continuing to affect residents today. The scenes between Lucy & her father are increasingly heartbreaking as the disease takes hold & anyone with an aging parent or partner will empathize with their pain & regret.
      Lucy is a compelling character. She's smart, responsible & you feel for her as she struggles to handle pressures from her job & home life. Events will force her to reexamine what she thought she knew about her parents & decisions they made. My only quibble was with her tendency to make impulsive decisions & mistakes more in keeping with a rookie than a DS. Still, I appreciated her quiet determination. No whiners here, thank God!
      The ending is far from tidy which makes it more realistic. You get the sense she will come to terms with how the cases were resolved. Changes in her personal life may take a bit longer to get used to but at least her plate is now only half full. There are 2 more books scheduled for release this year & I'll definitely pick up the next one to see where Lucy's future leads.
    • 4/5
      I believe that I may have read everything this author has ever written...if I'm wrong in that then I can say that what I have read has never disappointed me. This may not be to everyone's liking as it quotes a great deal of scripture from Revalation in support of the many gruesom acts that occur. It's a dark, complicated story of psychological suspense with several interrelated threads and subplots that are eventually woven together. The only drawback I could see to the book was that the ending was very abrupt.