Shopping Malls Can Be Sinister Places

It's that holiday gift-buying time of year when, even though most of my shopping has moved online, I may have one or two visits to the shopping malls. Though I dread the parking, the crowds, and trekking the maze of stores, I usually don't think of a mall as a sinister setting. Yet it doesn't take too much imagination to find their dark side. Consider What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn. The mystery starts in the 1980s when independent 10-year-old Kate, toting a toy monkey and a notebook of observations, plays detective in a newly opened shopping mall and befriends, Adrian, the 22-year-old son of a local shopkeeper. Then the little girl disappears and Adrian naturally comes under suspicion until, hounded by the press, he also vanishes. Jump to 2003. Now Adrian's sister Lisa is working as a manager at a discount record store in the same mall and becomes obsessed by security guard Kurt's surveillance-camera sightings of a little girl with a toy monkey. Lisa and Kurt develop an after-hours friendship as they join to investigate. Throw in Teresa, Kate's classmate who is now a detective, and you have a haunting mystery set in the eerie underground and locked stretches of the mall. In Silvermeadow, an entry in Barry Maitland's Brock and Kolla mystery series, a supermall outside London is the setting for two seemingly unrelated cases. A girl goes missing from the mall and then a violent criminal is spotted at the mall. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla come to launch a manhunt for the wanted man centered on the mall, and their team uses the investigation into the missing girl as cover. But is there more than a coincidental connection? Finally, if you're looking for a thriller pro, try Nora Roberts' 2018 bestseller Shelter in Place, which starts with a mass shooting at a Portland, Maine, mall. After 8 minutes of carnage, the killers are taken down, but the terror doesn't stop for some survivors as they discover that another conspirator is lying in wait. Of course, it is the holidays, and for those who must brave the malls and so would rather keep their mall perspectives less disturbing, there are Laura DiSilverio's cozy Mall Cop mysteries: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=disilverio+mall+cop+series&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss