Emilya Naymark

Holy moly! This book was seriously intense and I loved every second of it! A retired detective, whose husband left her and her son and never turned back, decided to make a move to a small town and start over. Her 13yo son has always had a stutter and was constantly picked on.
One day he doesn’t come home from school and the local police think ah it’s normal for kids that age to stay out late and will be back soon.

She knows her son and doesn’t believe it and knows something bad happened to her son. With her background she used her skills as a detective to take it upon herself to find out what happened to her son.

As a mom, this is a worst case scenario situation for me and this book had my heart thumping at every turn of the page.

What happened to her son will surprise you and this books reiterates the need as a parent to always trust your gut when it involves your kids.

This is a mystery you don’t want to miss. Thank you @crookedlanebooks for my gifted copy.… (más)

A summer block party on Laney Bird's block goes massively wrong when one of the neighbors is shot in the butt, another drives a stolen pick-up into his own living room, and two women go missing.

Laney is a former NYPD detective who moved to small, rural Sylvan, New York, with her son Alfie after a difficult divorce. She is now working as a private investigator for a local firm specializing in tracking down runaways. Alfie is fifteen and a unique individual who's somewhere on the Asperger's Spectrum. He seems to have a talent for choosing really inappropriate friends.

One of the missing women is Holly Dubois who is also a one of the viewpoint characters, and Laney's first and only friend since her move to Sylvan. It is her husband who drove into their living room. The other missing woman is Vera Volkin whose husband was the gunshot victim.

Holly is the glue of the neighborhood. She's constantly busy taking care of her home, her husband, her three children, her brothers - one of whom is battling cancer and the other is recently out of drug rehab, and anyone else who comes to her attention. Holly is overcompensating because of the guilt she still feels over the death of her sister who drowned while high on drugs when Holly was only thirteen.

Holly's need to be everything to everyone has led her deep into debt. The house she inherited from her grandparent's and on which she has taken several mortgages is going to be foreclosed. Vera and Step Volkin have wormed their way into her life and have a really great plan to get her out of debt; all she has to do is steal proprietary information from her husband's lab where he is working on longevity drugs.

Meanwhile, Laney is investigating the disappearance of a teen from a camp nearby. The same camp where her son's new much-older girlfriend Mona worked. Laney learns that the boy's disappearance isn't the first from the camp and that the Volkins and Mona were instrumental in the boy's disappearance.

This is a twisty tale including missing teens, corporate espionage, and foreign agents with nasty agendas. It was a bit slow at the start, but the action picked up quickly and the story became a real page turner.… (más)

In Hide In Place, book one of the Laney Bird Series, author Emilya Naymark transports the reader to the Hudson Valley town of Sylvan in upstate New York, for an intriguing story that will keep the reader guessing and turning the pages.

Retired undercover NYPD Detective Laney Bird's thirteen year old son Alfie has gone missing, and she uses her detective experience to investigate his disappearance. What looks like a classic troubled teen running away from home is anything but that when Laney discovers that her past may have come back to haunt her. A former confidential informer has surfaced in Sylvan and befriended Alfie, ultimately kidnapping him. Laney's search for her son leads her to a killer determined to seek revenge.

Author Emilya Naymark weaves a slow-building and suspenseful tale that follows Laney's investigation to find Alfie before the killer exacts revenge for Laney's part in a narcotic case gone bad against the local Russian mob. I loved reading this action-packed story. Laney's determination and detail to police procedure used within her investigation to find her son kept me intrigued as she slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together.

The reader will be easily drawn into this richly descriptive plot that will keep them guessing as long hidden secrets, family dramas, motive, and clues are uncovered. And if that's not enough, the author provides the reader with an intense flashback to Laney's family issues and her last case as an undercover NYPD detective that went horribly wrong, and set the wheels in motion for her to retire and move to upstate NY to protect her son, only to find a devastating betrayal that would lead the killer right to Laney and Alfie.

I look forward to reading the next book in the Laney Bird Series.

Hide In Place has enough drama, tension, action, dark secrets, intrigue, and unexpected twists and turns that will take the reader on one heck of a thrilling roller coaster ride.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the author / publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review and participation in a virtual book tour event hosted by Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours.

https://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/2021/03/hide-in-place-by-emilya-nayma...… (más)

All Laney Bird ever wanted to do was become a cop. She was hired by the NYPD and has worked as a detective and an undercover officer. She spent a lot of her time with drug dealers trying to take down a Russian mob. At home was her husband Theo who was an artist and her son Alfie who had issues like uncontrollable temper tantrums and a major stutter. She thought everything was fine in her life...until it wasn't.

When her case blows up and her husband packs his bags after telling her that he's tired of her and Alfie holding him back and that he never loved her anyway, Laney resigns from the force and takes her son to upstate New York.

Three years have passed since their relocation. But one day Alfie goes missing. He's all she has left in her life and she's determined to find him. The local police aren't very worried. Alfie has run off before when stress got too much for him. The school isn't worried either. In fact, they might be relieved because Alfie isn't an easy student. Laney and the principal are on a first name basis after 54 visits to his office because of things Alfie did.

Laney is determined to find her son because she knows something is really wrong. Things get even more difficult when she learns that her former partner has recently died of a heroine overdose and the man who was wrongly convicted when the case against the Russian mob blew up is out of prison and has revenge on his mind.

Laney conducts her own investigation using access to police databases she shouldn't have and social media to build a picture of what happened to Alfie and who might have taken him.

Alfie is also a point of view character in this story as he tells what is happening to him after his kidnapping. I really enjoyed seeing the world through Alfie's eyes and loved that he found his voice and his courage because of his kidnapping.

I liked Laney's determination. I felt bad for her because she felt that she was so alone but glad that she finally realized that she had friends who were willing to help her.

The story was fast-paced and filled with tension. The characters were well-rounded and engaging. I recommend this one to all fans of thrillers.… (más)