Close Your Eyes by Teresa Driscoll
Genre: Psychological thriller, Crime thriller
Read: 26th June 2025
Published: 1st January 2025
★★★ 3.5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Finding missing children is Matthew’s job—but this time it’s his own daughter who’s disappeared.
When private investigator Matthew Hill picks up the call from his wife, Sally, his world comes crashing down. Their eight-year-old daughter, Amelie, is missing. One second, she was there, the next, she was gone.
It’s the very nightmare they’ve been dreading. Long ago, Matthew left the force after a woman blamed him for her son’s death, promising that he too would one day feel her pain. It’s a threat that’s hung over his family ever since, and now it’s Amelie’s picture on the news.
Matthew knows how these things go—the longer their daughter is missing, the less hope there is of finding her alive.
As the clock ticks and a canal is searched, he and Sally must reckon with their greatest fear…
MY THOUGHTS:
Finding missing people is Matthew’s job...but this time it’s his own daughter who’s disappeared...
I was drawn into this story from very first page. Having followed each of Teresa Driscoll's thrillers in which Matthew Hill features, I was keen to see where this one would take us. Usually he is on the periphery of each story as an investigator but this time he takes centre stage as his daughter suddenly goes missing.
The book opens up right away with Matthew's wife Sally in town shopping with their eight year old daughter Amelie before a birthday party that afternoon. Amelie sees a dress she wants to try but Sally, knowing how pressed for time they are, refuses promising they'll try it next time. Then as she is steering Amelie out of the dress shop, Sally's phone rings with bad news; she's done herself an injury and can't run the girls to the party - can Sally do it instead? After grabbing the details quickly, sure she's just been a few minutes, hangs up and turns to hurry Amelie along when she sees the space she had been just moments before empty.
Sally is frantic and begins running around calling for Amelie. Passersby notice her distress and begin searching along with her. Maybe Amelie went back to try on the dress but when she goes back to look for her in the dressing rooms, Amelie is not there. She is nowhere to be seen. She is frantic. Where is she? Has she just wandered off, impatient with waiting? Or has someone taken her baby girl?
The police are duly called by one of those helping Sally search as Sally phones Matthew who is currently seeing a new client. When he gets Sally's frantic message, he ends the meeting abruptly and races off to his wife's aid. He calls in a favour with his former colleague and friend DI Mel Sanders, now in Cornwall, and upon hearing the news, drops everything to head to Devon and head up the investigation into Amelie's disappearance.
Despite thorough searches and background checks into past threats made against Matthew, no trace of Amelie could be found. The CCTV behind the shop in which Sally and her daughter were was covered with a plastic bag. A prank or for nefarious purposes? Whatever CCTV there, Amelie could not be located on any of them. The police are stumped with no leads. And so the divers are brought in to search the nearby canal - just to rule it out. And instead find a body in its murky depths. But is it Amelie?
There is a lot going on in this tale as the search continues for the missing girl and police follow up the few leads they have...or search for clues for other potential leads. They look into Matthew's past cases as police officer and a private investigator to see if anyone bore him a grudge, besides the obvious they were quick to follow up. Usually Driscoll's books are thrillers as such with no real police investigation, except maybe Mel passing something on to Matthew for one of his PI cases. So in that way this was different as we did have a lot more police procedural.
I was fully invested until we got to Part Two. Then things started to go off piste a tad and I wondered how and why it all factored in. There was more to this side of the story that had me rolling my eyes - not so much in disbelief but sheer frustration in why must people lump religion with crazies? It happens, I know, but really it seems that it just makes a good scapegoat sometimes.
I had high hopes for this book given the different course it was taking Matthew on but the one it took us on was in some ways a little long-winded and I didn't care for the scapegoat material. I didn't even believe the reason behind the abduction - that was a little too far fetched. The finale was a little anti-climatic and the ending satisfactory enough. I'm a huge fan of her previous thrillers but a little disappointed in this one, in the end.
But in all, it was still a good read, just not one of Driscoll's best. I will, however, be looking out for more from her as it seems like it's been a while since I've read her.
I would like to thank #TeresaDriscoll, #Netgalley and #AmazonPublishing for an ARC of #CloseYourEyes in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Teresa writes women’s fiction as well as thrillers and her work has been optioned for film.
During her long career as a journalist, Teresa worked for newspapers, magazines and television, including 15 years presenting the BBC TV news programme Spotlight. Covering crime for so long, she was deeply moved by the haunting impact on the relatives, the friends and the witnesses and it is those ripples she explores now in her darker fiction.
Teresa lives in glorious Devon with her family and blogs regularly about her “writing life” at her website
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