The boy that never was - Karen Perry

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*** Featured on BBC Radio 2 Book Club on 6th May 2014 ***

'The Boy That Never Was is that powerful thing, a beautifully written mystery driven by its exploration of the characters' innermost hearts' Tana French

You were loved and lost - then you came back . . .

Five years ago, three-year-old Dillon disappeared. For his father Harry - who left him alone for ten crucial minutes - it was an unforgivable lapse. Yet Dillon's mother Robyn has never blamed her husband: her own secret guilt is burden enough.

Now they're trying to move on, returning home to Dublin to make a fresh start.

But their lives are turned upside down the day Harry sees an eight-year-old boy in the crowd. A boy Harry is convinced is Dillon. But the boy vanishes before he can do anything about it.

What Harry thought he saw quickly plunges their marriage into a spiral of crazed obsession and broken trust, uncovering deceits and shameful secrets. Everything Robyn and Harry ever believed in one another is cast into doubt.

And at the centre of it all is the boy that never was . . .

The Boy That Never Was is a deeply atmospheric and masterfully crafted tale of love and loss that will chill you to the bone. Fans of Rosamund Lupton and Sophie Hannah will fall in love with this debut from Karen Perry.

Praise for The Boy That Never Was:

'A truly remarkable novel . . . Written in a captivating, lyrical style and brilliantly structured, the story grips your heart from the first pages and simply never lets go' Jeffery Deaver

'This is a debut novel that will catch fire' Nelson DeMille

Karen Perry is the pseudonym for Paul Perry and Karen Gillece.

Paul Perry is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books including The Drowning of the Saints, Goldsmith's Ghost, 108 Moons, The Orchid Keeper, and most recently The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance. A winner of The Hennessy New Irish Writer of The Year Award, he is a Lecturer in Creative Writing for Kingston University, London, Writer Fellow for University College Dublin and Course Director in Poetry for the Faber Academy in Dublin.