Trafficked

By M. A. Hunter

What it’s about?

From Goodreads:

They stole away her future…
A French woman stumbles out of a forest in Dorset more than a decade after vanishing from the English beach where she had been innocently building sandcastles under the not-so-watchful gaze of her holidaymaking parents.

They never expected her to survive…

As investigative journalist Emma Hunter sifts through the secrets of a seemingly unrelated disappearance with police archivist Jack, it soon becomes clear the two cases are linked.

They never expected her to escape…

Emma enlists her best friend and broadsheet reporter Rachel to trace the French woman’s steps through the forest to a nightmarish underground cell littered with human bones. That’s when Emma realises this woman could be the answer, the answer to everything.

What I think:

Emma Hunter is coming closer to finding out what happened to her sister Anna and the story is getting darker.

Working with police officer Jack Sorrovitz, the investigation into to the disappearance of Anna Hunter has uncovered huge amounts of child pornography on the hard drive of the computer belonging to a convicted paedophile. The police are working to identify the victims and uncover connections that may help to resolve cold case.

Meanwhile, Aurelie LeBrun, the daughter of a French politician, who went missing on a British beach years earlier, turns up in a Dorset hospital. She has been held captive for 13 years and her father brings Emma in to help investigate the truth about where she has been and who held her there.

Aurelie’s story is the most heart breaking so far. Kidnapped at the age of 10, she is now a young woman in her twenties with no idea who she is. Years of abuse and captivity have left her broken and suspicious of everyone. Her name and parents are a distant memory and she calls herself “Four” – the number she was referred to by her captures.

Aurelie’s story is horrifying and the stories of the abuse that she has suffered are not for the faint hearted. the book explores the impact that the kidnapping and her abuse have had on her in a sensitive and compassionate way.

The story of Anna’s disappearance is very much in the background of this book and does not move on as much as I thought it would considering the cliff hanger that the last book left on. Having said that, the relationship between Emma and Jack is continuing to develop and Emma is certainly gaining invaluable insights into both the investigative process and the dark world of organised child abuse in which she is searching.

This is the third book in the missing Children Case Files – I have book 4 ready to read so hopefully there will be more answers in the next book.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley and for a gifted copy of Trafficked.