THE GIRL ON THE BUS
First Published 2017
2017. A lonely woman and an emotionally damaged ex-cop join together to solve a case no one else cares about…
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Vicki Reiner is emotionally isolated and craves the fleeting happiness she experienced in the years prior to her college graduation. In an attempt to recapture this, she invites her old college friend, Laurie, for a break at her deserted beach-side home in Oceanside, California. However, despite telling Vicki that she has booked an online bus ticket for an amazing price, Laurie never arrives.
Unable to accept the bizarre circumstances of her friend's disappearance, Vicki approaches the police- who dismiss her concerns- before enlisting the reluctant help of Leighton Jones.
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Leighton is a newly retired detective who is haunted by the death of his teenage daughter. Despite trying to remain detached from the case, Leighton is drawn to Vicki and her desperate search for the truth.
The unlikely pair will face numerous obstacles as they track down the answers across the dusty freeways of North America—and find themselves in grave danger along the way.
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What Amazon readers say about it:
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"Exciting and different story which kept me reading far too late into the night."
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"A Hell of a ride, which keeps your interest from start to finish. The characters are believable and some are downright scary."
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"Chilling and compelling with engaging characters that carry the reader through the narrative. It ends with twist upon twist with some genuine heart-stopping moments."
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'You might never again take an intercity bus trip after reading this gripping novel. It is well-written and plotted, and kept me turning pages at a rapid rate.'
'Thrilling is an understatement for this tale of a young woman whose friend goes missing!'
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Book Blogger Reactions
"Brown has succeeded in writing a wholly immersive plot that punches you in the gut whilst drawing concern, fear and very real emotion from his readers."
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"This is one of those books that just grabs you in a pulse pounding frenzy, and keeps it’s grasp until the last page. I loved the interaction between the two main characters too. It really made for an easy reading experience. I found a lot of originality in the plot, and that was really so refreshing."
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The Origin of this Bus-
About twenty years ago, I took a bus from Stirling to Inverness in the Highlands - a journey of over three hours through the picturesque but isolated Cairngorms National Park. The trip was lovely and the scenery stunning. Stirling merged into Perth then Perth into Pitlochry.
As I sank into my bus seat, complete with curtained window and complimentary cup holder, I lost myself in the pages of a cheap paperback book. Occasionally, I would drift off and wake with my face sliding on the cold glass of the window. But at some point, as the bus weaved its way through the rugged mountains, I realised that the dramatic landscape outside was quite devoid of civilisation. If anything happened to the coach party out there, no-one would ever know.
Then, in the typically morbid spirit of any crime fiction fan, I considered how terrible it would be if anyone on that solitary bus was actually a killer. Glancing nervously around at my fellow commuters, I studied their faces for traces of psychopathy, and concluded that they all had potential (it was Scotland after all). I then hit on an even more worrying possibility...What if everyone on the bus, including the driver, were killers? It would be a mobile crime scene. And what if that bus picked up a naïve passenger who felt safe because there were plenty of other people on the bus with them?
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A bus is simply a mobile murder room...
