Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

    It’s always such a pleasure to discover a really fine debut novel and this one from Elizabeth Haynes is a zinger!  Don’t know what the current temperature is wherever you are, but it’s mighty warm in the southwest - however, Into the Darkest Corner provides enough chills to cool anyone.

    Haynes has crafted an excellent psychological thriller with an emphasis on OCD and the dreadful toll it takes.  The author’s job as a police intelligence analyst in which she explores criminal patterns and behavior has given her rare insights.  Thus her characters are authentic, quite believable, often frighteningly so.

    Catherine Haynes is a bit of a party girl, so it’s not surprising when she’s out one evening in Lancaster, England, and meets Lee Brightman.  Sparks fly and instead of the usual one-nighter Catherine thinks she has met someone who might be permanent.  How permanent she has no initial idea.  Lee is not only great looking but attentive, a real charmer.  How lucky can a girl be?  Not very.

    Shortly after they become serious and start making plans for a future together she begins to have questions - he has never told her anything about himself, not even his job.  Plus what she once thought of as his attentiveness soon becomes oppressive - she feels she’s being scrutinized at all times and he begins telling her what to do.  It becomes progressively worse when in the name of what he calls love he monitors her every move, and has fits of temper.

    Coming home late one evening Catherine is greeted with the back of his hand, and that first blow soon escalates into a fierce cruelty.  She manages to escape Lee but just barely and he’s jailed for almost killing her.  But, her life will never be the same again.

    Some four years after the beating that almost took her life she has assumed a new identity but is consumed by obsessive-compulsive syndrome - repeatedly checking the locks and windows of her flat, unable to engage in casual conversations and prone to sleeplessness, panic attacks.  Despite what her life has become she is alive - but what if Lee were to be released from jail?