Hide and Seek by Richard Parker - A Review

It’s a day, just like any other day.  Lana is washing dishes, and her four-year old son Cooper is out playing in the yard. She glances briefly out the window, and sees that a man wearing a mask has jumped over the fence into their yard. To her horror, he begins placing a sack over Cooper. She fights with him, and saves her son from his would-be abductor. Before he flees the scene, the man whispers ‘tomorrow’. While reporting the incident to the police, the child reveals that the man has been in close contact with him on previous occasions, whispering to him through the fence. Now this monster has a name: Mr. Whisper.

Lana, her husband Todd, and Cooper relocate, but Lana cannot move on. She becomes obsessed with finding Mr. Whisper, and follows a website that tracks child killers and pedophiles. The police continue to investigate the case without success. When they win a family vacation at an adventure park, it seems an opportunity to put the ordeal behind them, even for a short time. At the park however, Todd is assaulted, and Cooper is abducted. Now, the nightmare truly unfolds.

Someone begins luring Lana to crime sites, Todd disappears from the hospital he was admitted to following the assault, and Cooper is still missing. What does all this mean? Where is Todd, and what dark secret is he hiding from his wife? Did the stranger keep his promise of ‘tomorrow’, or is someone using the child’s abduction to get to Lana?

Hide and Seek is packed full of dark and disturbing surprises around every turn. A mother on a quest to find her son, a father whose night terrors drive him to take desperate measures, and a stranger pulling the strings like a diabolical puppeteer, drawing them in for his own demented purpose. The characters are well developed and genuine, the settings are menacing, and the fear is palpable. The plot moves at lightning speed as a mother races to save her son, all the while somehow knowing she’s the missing token in this cruel and depraved game.

Richard Parker has done it again with another top notch, five-star thriller. This story will grab hold of you right from the start. Clear your calendar before you open it to Page 1 because there’s no way you’ll be able to put it down until the end.

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