Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney is an intense roller coaster ride of a mystery. With twists and turns and more than a few red herrings laying about.

Summary –

“…I stare at the empty stroller, wondering if I left the baby at home. I was so tired yesterday I put my phone in the fridge by accident. Maybe I forgot to put the baby in the buggy before I left the house today? But then I remember the elderly woman on the street, she saw the baby. The friend who is now a stranger saw the baby too. I saw the baby, five minutes ago. Maybe ten. When did I last see her? The panic rises and I spin around, looking up and down the supermarket aisle. She’s gone. The baby is too young to crawl. She didn’t climb out by herself.
Someone has taken her…”

Twenty years before a baby is stolen from a stroller, now a woman lays murdered in a care home. Somehow the two events are connected. But what is the truth that links the two events?

Edith was tricked by her children into living in the nursing home. Now her own daughter Clio refuses to speak with her. Her son she never sees. But there is someone who cares for Edith. Someone who will help her. Everyone thinks because she is old that her mind is frail but the opposite is the truth. Edith is planning her escape and the young girl Patience is all the help she needs. But what Edith does not know is that Patience has so many secrets of her own.

“…I am working but I don’t work here,’ says he young woman, speaking in riddles and tucking the silly strand of pink hair behind her heavily pierced ears. She studies Clio in a way that Clio normally studies others and it is unnerving. Clio waits for her to say more but she doesn’t. Sometimes the gaps between a person’s words are more interesting than the words themselves.
‘Sorry, I don’t understand,’ Clio says eventually.
‘I’m a detective,’ the woman replies, as though that should be a sufficient explanation.
Clio flushes with embarrassment and something else but soon recovers. ‘Then you do know about my mother. She’s the one who has gone missing. I presume that’s why you’re here?’
The detective shakes her head. ‘I’m not here about a missing person. I’m here about a murder…”

Frankie did a bad thing twenty years ago but it was for all the good reasons. Now things have changed and she is not sure is what she did will ever be made right. Her own secrets have left her estranged from her daughter, but now the past is intruding on the future.

“…The food she orders arrives quickly, but her phone beeps inside her bag before she can take a bite, which means she doesn’t see the police car drive past the window. Her phone hasn’t made a sound for almost a year-unless it was an alarm she set herself-and the unexpected noise makes her jump. She checks the time on her Mickey Mouse watch, and presumes it must be work getting in touch to see why she hasn’t turned up today. But it isn’t someone from the prison. It’s her daughter. Almost exactly a year since she ran away.
The text message is short, just three words.
HELP ME MUM…”

The past converging on the here and now, Frankie, Clio, Edith and Patience must find a way to join together before the secrets they keep; end up with another dead body.

Review –

Hot on the heels of one of my favorite books of 2023, Daisy Darker, Alice Feeney has delivered another murder/mystery that will tease and twist and challenge the reader to their utter delight in Good Bad Girl.

The key to this mystery is who is who. Early on you think you know just who the characters are but as the tale moves forward each person slowly evolves into someone completely different. Who is the victim and who is the savior. Who is the protagonist and who is hero. Feeney does a terrific job of juggling all these in the air as she drives the story forward at an frenetic pace.

What Feeney does so well is weave a web of mystery and subterfuge that the reader is challenged every chapter to rethink what is the actual plot of the novel. Her mysteries are not easily solvable and intriguing with each new morsel of plot that unravels.

Good Bad Girl is a terrific read!