Bury Your Secrets by M. R. MacKenzie
One Saturday afternoon, three friends head north for a long weekend. On Monday, they will return home, having buried a body in the woods.
For Hazel, reeling from the discovery of her long-term partner’s infidelity, a getaway to a remote coastal village with her best friends, Mickie and Claire, seems like the ideal remedy. And when a local man, Aidan, takes a shine to her, Hazel wonders if she’s ready to move on.
Within hours, however, Aidan is dead, leaving Hazel and her friends with a dreadful choice: to come clean or mount a cover-up. Determined to protect Hazel at all costs, the friends forge a desperate pact.
But secrets have a habit of catching up with you – and of testing the bonds of friendship to their limits. And Hazel is about to find out that, no matter how much she might wish otherwise, you can’t bury the truth forever.
A gripping standalone psychological thriller from the McIlvanney Prize-nominated author of the Anna Scavolini mysteries, Bury Your Secrets is perfect for fans of Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game, Andrea Bartz’s We Were Never Here and Luca Veste’s The Six.
About the author
M.R. Mackenzie was born and lives in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at Glasgow University and has an MA in English and a PhD in Film Studies.
In addition to writing, he works as a Blu-ray/DVD producer and has overseen releases of films by a number of acclaimed directors, among them Dario Argento, Joe Dante, Hideo Nakata and Jacques Tourneur. Writing as Michael Mackenzie, he has contributed chapters to books on cult cinema and regularly provides video essays and liner notes for new releases of celebrated films. He used to work in a library, before leaving to spend more time with books.
In 2019, his first novel, In the Silence, was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the Year and longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize. His third novel, The Library Murders, was featured in Crime Time’s Best of the Year 2020 list.
Review
I enjoyed reading ‘The Shadow Men’ so I was looking forward to reading this standalone, ‘Bury Your Secrets’. This was a tense psychological thriller that revolves around three female friends and I found it to be enticing and an exciting read.
It's Hazel’s 30th birthday and instead of spending it with her cheating boyfriend in Marbella, she is heading up north to Aberdeenshire with her best friend Claire and her cousin Mickie! Whilst there they meet a local man, Aidan but within hours he is dead lying on Hazel’s bedroom floor. They have two options - call the police or get rid of the body. They decide to form a part, bury the body and never speak of it again. But we all know that secrets never stayed buried right…
This was a very quick and entertaining read and it kept my attention - I read it in one day. I enjoyed reading about the girl's lives but after the event I felt sorry for Mickie the most. She is just left to her own devices and her pain and I didn't think Hazel had much empathy for her really. I didn't really like Hazel or Claire as people but I think that is the point so in that regard the author has succeeded in his task!
Let me know if you pick this one up!
