Title: The Locked Door
Author: Freida McFadden
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Rating: 5/5
“He is a narcissist and a psychopath, who likely killed at least thirty women without a trace of remorse. He is insane. He is a monster. He is also my father.”
Nora, a successful surgeon and a partner in her own practice, seems to have life figured out. However, dark shadows from her past begin to surface as bodies start piling up with the same signature as the serial killer that killed 30 women over 20 years ago, Nora’s father. Although Nora’s father is now in prison, there is no denying that these murders are connected to the man that killed those women in Nora’s family basement. Knowing Nora’s past, police begin to question Nora’s role in the new murders, forcing her to do everything she can to clear her own name.
“Dad always says that if you’re going to do something wrong, at least be smart enough not to let anybody see you do it.”
I can not get over how great this book is! A lot of times with mystery books, I can usually figure out who the killer is before it is revealed, but I can gladly say this book kept me guessing until the very end. There was never a point while reading this book where I knew without a doubt who the killer was. Every time I thought I had it figured out, someone else would come into the picture and make me second guess everything that I thought I knew.
This book also had a lot of creepy, intense moments that had me holding my breath. Just reading through scenes with Nora walking around her house alone at night had me reading each paragraph achingly slow, waiting for something terrible to happen. It was a similar sensation to watching scary movies where you want to yell at the actress to lock the doors and not investigate where the scary sound came from.
“He’s nobody’s father,” she said. “That man is the devil. And no good could come out of talking to the devil.”
The Locked Door is told in a dual timeline format, both present day and when Nora was younger before her father was arrested. Freida McFadden was smart to write it that way because it added more depth to the story and further muddled the mystery. I enjoyed reading both timelines equally as each had chilling elements and mysteries of their own. Due to this, I read through the book exceedingly fast because each chapter of both timelines would leave me on a cliffhanger.
After finishing the book, I was instantly tempted to go back and start it over now that I know how it ends. It is one of those stories that has a lot of hidden elements that I didn’t notice while reading it the first time. That is one of the biggest strengths of this book, that you can probably read it over and over and still find new clues that you didn’t notice the first time.
