What Was Lost
Synopsis
In the 1980s, Kate Meaney - with her ‘Top Secret’ notebook and Mickey her toy monkey - is busy being a junior detective. She observes goings-on and follows ‘suspects’ at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, where she is friends with the newsagent’s son, Adrian. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press. Then, in 2004, Adrian’s sister Lisa and security guard Kurt, become entranced by the little girl they keep glimpsing on the centre’s CCTV. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, they investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself.
Author Biography
Catherine O’Flynn was born in Birmingham in 1970, where she grew up in and around her parents’ sweet shop. She has been a teacher, web editor, mystery customer and postwoman - and her first novel draws on her experience of working in record stores. (As the Literary Review observes, ‘O’Flynn is just the colleague you’d want to be stuck with in a dead-end job.’). After a few years in Barcelona, she now lives in Birmingham.
