The Secret Child

A DI Amy Winter Thriller, Book 2

By: Caroline Mitchell

Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden

DI Amy Winter knows evil. She’s lived through it.

Four-year-old Ellen is snatched by a stranger in the dead of night. Her devastated mother, Nicole, receives four identical phials and a threatening note in a familiar scrawl that chills her to the bone. But she always knew this would happen. She’s been expecting it for years....

According to the note, one of the phials is poisoned. Nicole is given a deadly challenge: if she drinks one, the sadistic kidnapper will notify the police of Ellen’s location. The sender claims to be Luka Volkov, but Luka is supposed to be dead, killed long ago in a fire that haunts all those involved.

DI Amy Winter is still reeling from the discovery that she is the daughter of a serial killer, and her childhood trauma only makes her more determined to bring Ellen home. When another child is taken, Amy finds herself in a race against time. To rescue the children, must she seek help from the one person she wants to forget.

©2019 Caroline Mitchell (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

The reader is terrible.

The story is fine, and engaging enough. But the reader is just awful: too dramatic, with odd and unnecessary emphasis in every single sentence, and breathless delivery I found unbearably distracting.

A good Listen

I enjoyed this book, but hoped for a better resolution. What about the appeal? I don’t see that in the future for DI Winter.
Oh well...in to another author.

Better than the first! Can’t wait for the next

Love the suspense, link to 1st novel and the narration. Excellent pick up to the 1st novel plus intro to new characters. Highly recommend

Loved it

Always leave me trying to help figure it out....I’m really stuck on the story line.

Not as good as the first

This is a good second in the series. The story is not quite as compelling as the first but it’s solid. Amy is developing well. She seems stronger and more confident in this book. The narrator has a voice that sounds like whispers sometimes when it shouldn’t, but she does a decent job with the emotions of the characters.

2nd Gripping Story-DI Amy Winter & Kidnappings

This 2nd book in the series of DI Amy Winter is darker than the first. Winter survived a difficult parentage. Her biological parents were serial killers. Her father committed suicide and her mother, Lillian, is in prison but trying to get out on appeal. She is a psychopath who messes with the minds of everyone, including her children but especially with Amy in her position to solve murders. Amy has succumbed to her mother’s lure to find out what lurks in the mind of a child kidnapper and what can be done to stop them. Amy has a difficult time coping with her mother and with her ex-fiancé who has discovered Amy’s mother and written an expose in the paper about Amy. How can Amy possibly be capable of seeing the crime from the victim when she can identify so easily with the perpetrator? This is the theme running through this second book. A child of a well known doctor has been kidnapped by one of the doctor’s subjects from years ago. The subject supposedly died in a fire but someone using his name claims to be the kidnapper. This is a very dark story and has many psychological twists and turns. Amy Winter is not easy to like but she has redeemed herself. She knows who she is and while she may deviate in her mind, she never lets her dark past interfere with her police work. This book solves the kidnapping but opens the door to other issues. It appears that Lillian may win her appeal to be heard. No one ever saw her kill anyone, except Amy did. The daughter she was supposed to have murdered is alive and living in London. Sally Anne is worried that she will be required to testify if the appeal does occur. She is afraid to stand up to her mother. The book ends with Amy and Sally Anne having a conversation about the possibility of an appeal. So, I think we can be looking for a Book 3 in the not too distant future. Caroline Mitchell is a superb teller of the thriller. The audible version has a narrator with a whispery voice which makes you think she might be sneaking up on you. Elizabeth Knowledon is superb. She adds to the anxiety this book brings to the reader/listener.

awesome follow up to the first book. I loved it.

It was such a good book. I stayed up all night to listen to it.

outstanding mystery

If you enjoy serial mysteries you'll enjoy this author second book in developed great characters ,ready for the next !

Eh ..

It was ok. Amy annoyed me by never listening to anyone and sounding like Hermoine Granger. I could have lived never listening to this book.

Entertaining listen

I really enjoyed the first DI Winter book and liked this second installment but found that there were a few too side stories that cluttered up the narrative. Overall, though, the story kept my attention, and I would recommend it.