When seven-year-old Alyssa is kidnapped, Deputy Noah Harper decides he will do what it takes to find her - but that means crossing lines he can never come back from. Finding the girl safe isn't enough to stop Noah from losing his job, his wife, and from being kicked out of Acacia Pines. He's told if he ever returns, he'll be put in jail and left there to rot. Now, 12 years later, comes a phone call. Alyssa is missing again and her father wants him to honour the promise he made to her all those years earlier - that he would never let anything bad happen to her again. To find her, Noah is going to have to head back to the pines, and come face to face with the past...

Paul Cleave is currently dividing his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where all of his novels are set, and Europe, where none of his novels are set. His novels have so far been translated into 20 languages. He has won the Saint-Maur book festival's crime novel of the year, has been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly award, the Edgar Award, the Barry Award, and has won the Ngaio Marsh award three times for NZ crime fiction.On top of praise from the press -"the next Stephen King," "uses words as lethal weapons," "a writer to watch," and "a rising star in the genre" - Cleave numbers among his fans top crime and thriller writers.