Desire Of The Moth

by Margaret Murphy

Dorothy Hardy and Ann Lee have two things in common. Both are social workers with connections to the Calderbank Children's home. And both have been abducted.Could their disappearances have anything to do with the child abuse scandal centered around the home? Is some sort of vendetta being waged against the local council staff?

But there is another link between the two women -- their former colleague Dr. Christine Radcliffe, a sophisticated, self-possessed consultant psychologist.

When the prime suspect becomes Christine's foster brother it becomes clear that the psychologist herself is nursing a dark, violent secret from her past...

Genres: Thriller

312 pages, Hardcover

Published October 24, 1997

About the author

Margaret Murphy writes internationally acclaimed and bestselling psychological thrillers under her own name, and in September 2023, she will publish the first of a new series, Dead Man Walking as M. K. Murphy.

She has also published forensic thrillers as Ashley Dyer and AD Garrett. She is a past Chair of the Crime Writers Association (CWA), founder of Murder Squad, and a former RLF Writing Fellow and Reading Round Lector. A Short Story Dagger, HRF Keating, and CWA Red Herring award winner, she has also been shortlisted for the ‘First Blood’ critics award and CWA Dagger in the Library.

www.margaret-murphy.co.uk
(Pseudonym: A.D. Garrett)
(Pseudonym: Ashley Dyer https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...)

Reviews

[sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

MS Murphy has surpassed all expectations

Again. Margaret has kept me gripped from start to finish. Amazingly insightful characters. Excellent story line . Plausible and frighteningly possible. Need a strong cuppa to extinguish the smell of the ending.....

[Crimefictioncritic · Rating 4 out of 5]

When two women go missing, the authorities learn that there is a connection. Both are social workers who were both once associated with a children’s home where there was a scandal. That leads the police to investigate the women’s past clients, including parents and children sent to the home who are now, ten years later, adults. The police zero in on one possible suspect in the abductions, Philip Greer, a parolee who in his youth was one of the troubled children the missing social workers worked with. When detectives attempt to interview him at home, Greer, still emotionally disturbed as an adult, has a melt-down. He assaults them and does a runner. That’s when his foster sister, educational psychologist Dr. Chris Radcliffe, gets involved. Knowing Greer perhaps better than anyone and fearing Greer might hurt someone or get hurt in a confrontation with the police, she searches for Philip herself, hoping to find him before the police do. Once Radcliffe comes to the attention of DCI Alan Jameson, he discovers she was also associated with the same children’s home at the same time as the missing women and fears she may become the abductor’s next victim.

Once they meet, Radcliffe aids DCI Jameson in the investigation to a degree, but still pursues her own separate unorthodox investigation to clear Philip Greer as a suspect. As she grows closer to exposing the villain’s identity, she faces threats to her life, and events that expose her own troubled childhood when she was abused by her father. The stakes escalate to the breaking point once Chris confronts potential suspects, all young men who were troubled youths connected to the children’s home at the time of the scandal.

The Darkest Hours is a psychological thriller that pits both the police and a psychologist as an amateur sleuth against an extremely dangerous serial killer. It’s truly difficult to summarize the book in only a couple of paragraphs since there is so much going on in this tense, suspense-filled thriller. Not only do we have the police’s desperate struggle to identify the suspect and find the missing social workers before it’s too late, we have Chris Radcliffe putting herself in harm’s way by confronting suspects alone while she is also dealing with her demons from the past.

I was disappointed initially once I felt I’d worked out who the villain was about three-quarters into the book (and I had) because it seemed too obvious. Though that part felt predictable, I kept reading, assuming there would be a twist. But in the end, there was no twist, which made the conclusion less than satisfying. Still, the rapid-fire pacing and edge-of-suspense makes the book a solid thriller that pushes the reader to keep turning the pages. Had I not started reading the novel so late during an afternoon, I would have felt compelled to finish it in a single sitting. The authentic perspective of an educational psychologist—one which Murphy weaves in comfortably and knowledgeably—makes this an authentic feeling read.

The characters themselves are all believable, with lots of detail about things going on in their personal lives that make them feel real. The investigation by both the police and Radcliffe aren’t dependent on any super-sleuth skills. It’s all fairly straightforward logic and an investigation that seems sensible. The very human characters make the story much more real, which is particularly important given some of the difficult moral and emotional topics that this novel tackles.

The Darkest Hours is a solidly plotted, page-turner of a thriller. Murphy does an excellent job of keeping it tightly paced without it feeling forced or contrived, or like the characters are in unreasonable amounts of danger. The peril and tension fit well with the story and the circumstances, and make this novel very easy to immerse yourself in. It’s definitely a book that you should pick up if you are a psychological thriller fan.

[Valerie Boik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

Honestly, I struggled a lot with this book. The first half, Chris is trying to find her brother. The second half they are trying to determine whose the killer. While it is a mystery, it lacks suspense. It would be more of a procedural drama told from the view points of different people. It’s an okay story, but I really struggled to finish it. I found myself skipping pages (which never really happens). Although I waited for the suspense, it never came.

[K Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

I enjoyed this book, excellent story which although long was never boring and kept you interested. I just found the ending abrupt which is why I've not even 5 stars. Found the ending really disappointing. My favourite so far by this author is the DCI Jeff Rickman series.

[Eirlys · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real thriller.

This book was incredibly enthralling and addictive. I was so engrossed that I kept thinking, just one more chapter, but I couldn't stop until the end came. I usually know who the killer is, but not this time.A well crafted story.

[Irene Cass · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst book I ever read and I am an avid reader. Overuses vocabulary words to sound intelligent, but a veritable plethora of them were misused or not for people with limited vocabulary. Very, very disappointed with this author. What a waste of time and money.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 not rounded up. It was just an average read. Christine needs to get her own life together before she helps anyone else. It was not nearly as riveting as other books she has written. Even listening, I found her irritating.

[Margaret Lind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again a very exciting and well written book by Margaret Murphy. Look forward to following this author.

[christine arlott-clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once started you just HAVE to finish

A lot of characters intertwined in some ways. A lot of discoveries , but still the question, who and why...read on

[jean buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Troubled soul

This was a very unusual Story. Seemed to take a long time to get to the point. To many twist and turns.

[Susan Joslin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hung in there with this book but it just seemed to drag. The ending was disappointing.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. Not my fav by her.

[Kelsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf. Listened while I traveled to istp.

[Lopsided · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.20 audio

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was okay - I probably wasn’t listening as closely as I should have been, so maybe it could’ve been more interesting. It felt like there was a start to some really good character development but then it was almost like there were too many characters and just ended up leaving them all flat.

[Ilze · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one watches insects jetting into and out of lights, one thinks it's because they hate the dark - even if they're only active in the dark hours. To think that they might do it for recognition, is something that's never entered my mind. Obviously the image of a moth flying into a lamp appears in the book, in addition to its symbolic meaning. It's the other elements of this tale that fascinate. The social workers and the people they work with, in this case, children. Abused children in England and how the abuse affects their adult lives, more to the point, you see four or five of them in great detail through the mind of the psychologist that treated them. That's the part that I found most interesting.

The tension in the book surrounds two murders (social workers) that mystify the local police. Chief Inspector Alan Jameson is the one allocated to this case and he views Dr Chris(tine) Radcliffe as the main suspect. This is as a result of the fact that she worked with the two deceased many years ago. When more murders take place, the police tries to find connections between the social workers and the clients they worked with and when they discover that things have been torn out of the files in the archives, things get interesting - even more so once Radcliffe's life seems to be in danger. Once she gets knocked off the suspect list and moves onto the potential victim list, the reader knows anything is possible!

A lot of research has gone into this book and the detailed descriptions throughout vouch for that. The psychological theories that come to the fore and the issues discussed, could almost be taken out of the DSM! Besides the research into social workers and their cases, there is the way the police force functions and deliquents think. It's all stuff that intrigues me, allowing me to finish the book in two days ... and left me surprised, yet not quite caught off-guard, at who the moth is. The image of Chris letting the moth fly off is fair food for thought, because even if the moth used its wings to fly, what was really going on in its head?

[Julie Durovchic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a wonderful writer.