Excerpt from The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Could be expensive over New Year."

"Not if I go somewhere the Foreign Office says is a terrorist risk."

I raise an eyebrow.

"Anyway," she adds, "what's another grand or two when you're already in the red?"

"True." But I don't want to talk about money. Lately, it's the only thing I hear about. We pass the police HQ in Wapping, close to the zone change at which the westbound boats are required to reduce speed precisely as passenger impatience starts to build. We're entering the London the world recognizes—Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Shard—and as the landmarks rise, Gretchen and Kit and their troubles sink queasily from my mind.

"Enjoy Afghanistan, if you go," I say, when she prepares to disembark at Blackfriars for her office near St Paul's.

She smiles. "I was thinking more like Morocco."

"Much better. Let us know." My joker's grin shrinks the moment the doors close behind her and I rest my cheek on the headrest, stare out of the window. Seven fifty in the morning and I'm already done in. The water is high as we sail towards Waterloo, sucking at the walls with its grimy brown gums, and the waterside wonderland of lights that glows so magically after dark is exposed for the fraudulent web of cables that it is. It's as quick to get off at Westminster Pier and walk across the bridge as it is to wait for the boat to make a U-turn and dock at the Eye, but I choose to sit it out. I hardly register the pitch and roll that once threw me into alarm or, for that matter, the great wheel itself, its once miraculous-seeming physics. Disembarking, I ignore the waiting ticket holders and stroll up the causeway with sudden sadness for how quickly the brain turns the wondrous into the routine: work, love, friendship, traveling to work by catamaran. Or is it just me?

It's at precisely that moment, that thought—right on the beat of me—that a man steps towards me and flashes some sort of ID.

"James Buckby?"

"Yes." I stop and look at him. Tall, late twenties, mixed race. Business-casual dress, sensitive complexion, truthful eyes.

"Detective Constable Ian Parry, Metropolitan Police." He presses the ID closer to my face so I can see the distinctive blue banner, the white lettering, and straightaway my heart pulses with a horrible suction, as if it's constructed of tentacles, not chambers.

"Is something wrong?"

"We think there might be, yes. Christopher Roper has been reported missing. He's a good friend of yours, I gather?"

"Christopher?" It takes a moment to connect the name to Kit. "What d'you mean, missing?" I'm starting to tremble now. "I mean, I noticed he wasn't on the boat, but I just thought…" I falter. In my mind I see my phone screen, alerts for those missed calls from Melia. Her heart-shaped face, her murmured voice humid in my ear.

We're different, Jamie. We're special.

The guy gestures to the river wall to my left, where a male colleague stands apart from the tourists, watching us. Plainclothes, which means CID, a criminal investigation. I read somewhere that police only go in twos if they think there's a risk to their safety; is that what they judge me to be?

"Melia gave you my name, I suppose?"

Not commenting, my ambusher concentrates on separating me from the groups gathering and dispersing at the pier's entrance, owners of a hundred purposes preferable to my own. "So, if we can trouble you for a minute, Mr. Buckby?"

"Of course." As I allow myself to be led towards his colleague, it's the coy, old-style phrasing I get stuck on. Trouble you for a minute, like trouble is a passing trifle of an idea, a little Monday-morning fun.

Excerpted from The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish. Copyright © 2021 by Louise Candlish. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.