Auntie M highly recommended Elizabeth Haynes’ debut novel Into the Darkest Corner.darktide

With her newest, Dark Tide, Haynes’ proves her complex skill at plotting suspense novels was not an accident, in this page-turning thriller about what happens when the protagonist’s past catches up with her.

Told in alternating time narratives in a similar fashion to her first novel, this device proves successful in ratcheting up the chill factor without seeming stale.

Genevieve wants to leave her high-pressure job and thinks she’s found a way to fund her dream of living on houseboat in Kent: working weekends as a pole dancer at a gentleman’s club will finance her refuge.

She tries her best to keep this job a secret as she starts her boat fund and becomes a master at ignoring the dicey business the club conducts on the side.

She’s very good at dancing and learns to chat up the men, but also good at keeping her distance from the men and from the shady owner, Fitz, and his staff.

Becoming a favorite of Fitz, her lithe body and dancing coupled with her cool grace earn her a place doing special parties and her bank account starts to bulge. Soon the barge that will be her home is within her sights.

Genevieve is having a housewarming party on her new boat, including her neighbors from her boatyard, tossed in with a handful of London friends.

Then a body surfaces right next to her boat. When Genevieve recognizes a dancer from the club who was her friend, everything changes and she’s in for a fight for her survival as her past catches up with her.

Complicating matters are the policeman she’s drawn to and the security man who has had her back all along, the dark figure Dylan.

Genevieve’s a likable character, a gal readers will understand, who finds herself all too quickly out of her depth and unable to control the chain reaction of events that will threaten her and those she’s come to love.

Haynes builds tension as the pages flip and the story pans out. A police intelligence analyst, she uses her knowledge of the patterns of offenders’ behavior to build completely realistic and ruthless criminals.

She’s also done a good job of allowing Genevieve to feel she has her life in control, her decisions reasonable and well thought out–until suddenly she doesn’t have the control she’s used to and everything rapidly falls apart.

Highly entertaining and filled with tension and suspense, this is a sexy, taut thriller that will have you keeping your eye out for the next Elizabeth Haynes thriller.