Behind the Red Door

June 1, 2020
Nightmares have been plaguing Fern Douglas. That's bad enough, but when Astrid Sullivan, a woman Fern doesn't know, starts showing up in the dreams, Fern has to wonder whether her nightmares might really be recovered memories. As a child, Fern lived just a few miles from Astrid, yet she doesn't know anything about Astrid's kidnapping though it was covered by the local and national news: Taken by a stranger, Astrid was kept for weeks and then mysteriously found near her own house, blindfolded and drugged but otherwise unharmed. How can Fern have no memory of the famous story? Now, 20 years later, Astrid Sullivan has been abducted again. Fern has a chance to investigate her weird connection to Astrid when she returns to Cedar, New Hampshire, to help her father, Ted, pack up before his move to Florida. Back in her hometown, Fern begins to read Astrid's memoir, which sparks memories of having been with Astrid during her first kidnapping. Fern begins to track down people who might help her put the pieces together, including her best friend, Kyla, and Kyla's scary brother, Cooper, who bullied Fern as a child. Meanwhile, Fern must once again navigate Ted's "Experiments." A psychologist specializing in the study of fear, Ted has used Fern since she was a child as a test subject, and now he is eager to interview her, hoping to use her newly recovering memories for his latest scholarly treatise. Collins nimbly orchestrates Fern's growing sense of terror as she slowly sifts in echoes of long-repressed sounds and sights. Discovering who kidnapped Astrid and how Fern is connected makes for a tricky mystery. Even in the final pages, Collins avoids any expected resolution, leaving the reader deliciously unsettled and disturbed. A dark psychological thriller riddled with twisted family dynamics.

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June 8, 2020
Boston social worker Fern Douglas, the 32-year-old heroine of this harrowing if credulity stretching psychological thriller from Collins (The Winter Sister), reluctantly returns to her New Hampshire hometown to help her retired professor dad pack for a move to Florida. She’s bracing for the inevitable bad memories, in particular the times he duped his affection-starved only child into unwittingly serving as the experimental subject for his research into the psychology of fear. Fern’s trip coincides with the highly publicized hunt for missing 34-year-old Astrid Sullivan, the bestselling author of Behind the Red Door, a memoir about her teenage kidnapping ordeal in nearby Foster, N.H. Fern initially has nightmares, then she experiences what feel like flashbacks as she reads Astrid’s memoir. She becomes convinced their pasts are connected and, if she could only remember more, she could help rescue Astrid. Though Collins plays her cards carefully to maximize suspense, with a couple of jokers thrown in, the plot builds to an unsurprising resolution. Genre veterans will find nothing new. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

June 1, 2020
Astrid Sullivan, kidnapped 20 years ago when she was 14, escapes, lives to tell the tale in a memoir, Behind the Red Door, and, just as the book takes off, is kidnapped again on the exact date of her original abduction. Big news, obviously, but eerily disturbing to school social worker Fern Douglas, who starts having dreams in which a pleading Astrid appears. Fern grew up in the same New Hampshire town as Astrid but doesn't remember her. Fern returns to her hometown, though, at the bidding of her abusive psychologist father (who conducted punishing experiments on Fern when she was a child). Fern's decision to return to help her aging father move lacks credulity, but it does get her on scene, where she can use Astrid's memoir to interview people from Astrid's past and possibly to find out who is responsible for the second kidnapping and even to determine where she is, dead or alive. Many readers will figure out whodunit long before Fern does, but this is still an absorbing psychological thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)