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Notting Hill, London. One May evening, seventeen-year-old Maggie Parker’s mother walks out of their front door and doesn’t return . . .
With her little brother in tow, desperate to find her mother, Maggie is drawn into a labyrinthine world of antiques and shadowy figures. There she befriends someone else living on their wits. But can he help solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance?
Twenty-one years later, in a Parisian apartment, Maggie’s phone rings and her hard-won grown-up life shatters. While in London, the new owner of the Parker’s old house is excavating the basement, unaware of what might lie beneath.
Sweeping from bustling London streets, the boulevards of Paris to an old English country house, The Midnight Hour is a thrilling, richly woven story about a golden family with a hidden past – and a woman trying to turn back the hands of time before it’s too late.
MY THOUGHTS
My thanks to both Gaby Young and Frankie Banks of PMJ for the opportunity to take part in the blog tour and for the review copy. Having previously read and enjoyed The Glass House, I didn’t hesitate at the chance of reviewing this latest book from Eve Chase. My apologies to the publisher for being a day late in posting – tech issues prevented me from posting on my day yesterday.
Moving between two timelines and locations, London’s Notting Hill in 1998 and Paris in 2019, The Midnight Hour was just the type of mystery for me. A mother goes out for the evening leaving her two children at home and doesn’t return. Where is she? Is her disappearance due to a terrible accident or intentional and if the latter, why leave your children alone?
Maggie Parker is 17 when her mother Dee-Dee, an ex-model with some celebrity status goes missing and feels overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after her younger brother Kit. He is not an easy child and Maggie has to make the decision as to whether she should report her mother’s disappearance to the police and risk them being split up and taken into care or just wait a bit longer to see if she returns Their father had died and with only an estranged aunt as remaining family, there is no adult she can turn to.
This is a coming of age story for Maggie as well as a mystery. The appearance of a boy called Wolf into their lives has major repercussions and lives will be changed forever.
In 2019, 38 year old Margaret Foale has made a life for herself in Paris as a novelist. However an unexpected phone call completely derails her settled life and events bring her back to London. As events unfold the story highlights a broken family with long held secrets.
The Midnight Hour is a slow burner to begin with but as the revelations keep coming, the pace increases and I was completely invested in the what and the why. Maggie was the linchpin of the story but ably accompanied by Kit, rather a fragile character fighting his own demons and Aunt Cora, a no-nonsense woman who had a far better connection with her animals than with her family. With well drawn supporting characters like Wolf and Gav Out Back, this is a multi layered story of love, loyalty and dysfunctional family relationships with an undercurrent of danger and mystery.
I very much enjoyed this. Eve Chase’s characters feel authentic with their flaws being very much part of the story. Maggie was always the protective big sister even it meant hiding things from Kit. With the story’s clever construction, the reason for Dee-Dee’s disappearance kept me guessing as did the events around that phone call; the author teases the reader with unexpected revelations. and just when I thought I had worked it all out, I was thrown off course by another curve ball.
With its gorgeous cover and immersive story of family drama and relationships, The Midnight Hour is one to be recommended.
Eve Chase writes page-turning mysteries set in beautiful places, thick with secrets. Her last novel, The Birdcage, won great acclaim and sales and The Glass House was a Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club pick. The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde was longlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award and Black Rabbit Hall won the Saint-Maur en Poche prize in Paris for Best Foreign Fiction. Both were runaway Amazon bestsellers. The Midnight Hour is her fifth novel. Her novels have been translated into twenty languages. Married with three children, she lives in Oxford.
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