I LET YOU GO is a dark book, a painful but exciting read that is full of twists and turns. Debut author Clare Mackintosh knows her territory --- she was a British law enforcement officer for over a decade and, as her Author’s Note indicates, is no stranger to personal tragedy --- and it shows in this well-written, terrifying tale dipped in shades of gray.

The problem with describing I LET YOU GO to any great degree is that to reveal one twist is to reveal all. Of course, a review consisting of “read this read this read this” doesn’t work either, so let’s see what we can do here to pique your interest while not revealing the corkscrews that undoubtedly kept Mackintosh burning midnight oil for multiple midnights. The initial premise is horribly simple and tragic. A five-year-old boy walking home from school with his mother runs ahead and is struck and killed by an automobile. The driver leaves the scene of the accident, leaving the grieving mother in the street. The case is understandably a high-profile one, and is assigned to Detective Inspector Ray Stevens and the relatively newly minted Detective Constable Kate Evans.

"There are enough wonderful characters here to populate two separate series, if Mackintosh were to be so inclined.... I LET YOU GO is simply too good a novel with too many surprises to reveal any of them here."

The narrative alternates almost entirely throughout the book --- with a few very notable exceptions --- between the police investigation and the first person present account of a haunted, troubled woman named Jenna Gray, who is intimately connected with the tragedy. The story jumps ahead in fits and starts --- several months go by with a flick of the page --- until Stevens and Evans obtain a clue that enables them to make an arrest in the case. That concludes Part One of the book. Part Two is a wild downhill roller coaster ride whereby a new and extremely important character is introduced, and we learn ever so much more about Jenna’s background and what brought her to the state she is in within the book’s present.

Meanwhile, Stevens, a driven detective whose superlative work product is acquired at the expense of his family, and Evans --- young, single, smart and attractive --- have to deal with their mutual attraction to each other, kindled by their proximity during the course of their investigation, mutual shared interests, and dissatisfaction with their personal lives when they are off the job. Mackintosh spends a good deal of the book --- from the end of Part One and throughout Part Two --- lobbing concussion grenades into the proceedings when the reader least expects them while providing a few quirky secondary characters to keep things even more interesting. You may guess the ending, but the road there will take you places you’ll never expect.

There are enough wonderful characters here to populate two separate series, if Mackintosh were to be so inclined. Certainly Evans and Stevens have more to tell us in future volumes, and as for... well, that would be telling, and I will not do that. I LET YOU GO is simply too good a novel with too many surprises to reveal any of them here. This book and author live up to their pre-publication word of mouth.