A Stockholm Syndrome Romance Novel you Will Never Forget: the Shuttered Room by Charles J Harwood

A psychological thriller about abduction with an unexpected twist, Jessica Fraser finds herself trapped in an upstairs room held to ransom by three nasty thugs. But Jess has a secret, a secret that would have made her abductors think twice before picking her as their target.

Kidnapping Thriller

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This novel tells the story of Jessica Fraser, married with a son and with plenty of money would appear to have the sort of perfect life many others crave, but her dark past soon catches up with her when she is abducted by three thugs and held in an upstairs room.

Jess manages to catch the police’s attention in a failed attempt to get away, but the thugs retain their cover by taking on a baby to feign a family setup. With no one to find her, how does Jess while away the hours in a small room?

What to do in a Locked Room

In fact, Jess has more than enough to think about after cutting a hole in the floorboards from where she spies upon her abductor’s everyday lives below. Jess’s spying soon becomes  obsessive until she finds herself playing psychological games with them. With her life in the balance, Jess discovers unsavoury truths about herself and starts to question her own sanity, least of all her growing feelings for one of her captors, Jake. The sort of book I would like to read, you might find yourself reading into the night.

Dynamics of Captive and Captor

Get this audiobook from Audible

The seeds were sown in 2005 after a weird idea for a story kept prodding my mind and refused to go away. (This has happened several times, the results of which are uncompleted manuscripts and screenplays languishing in drawers.)

The idea manifested itself over several months and from many sources: a casual interest in psychology; Freud’s theory on Ego states; Eric Berne’s little known but brilliant book “Games People Play,” the Big Brother phenomenon, and my own life experiences. At the book's heart lies the taboo and repression.

I began to think “what if...?” the story seemed to write itself and the rest is history.

The Shuttered Room: a Tale of Abduction

I put my manuscript in the bottom drawer and then worked on the redraft. After much hard work conceiving the book design, editing, re-editing after producing the audiobook version, my tale of psychological cat-and-mouse is now available in all formats.

Psychological Thrillers in Large Print

If only they knew: Charles J Harwood

Note: since writing this, The Shutttered Room is now available within a 4 in 1 thriller bundle book, Eclipse Quartet: 4 Psychological Thrillers, which supersedes the previous trilogy, Gone Too Far (3 Psychological Thrillers about Taboo).

Read an excerpt from the Shuttered Room on this blog.

I have written three other novels, A Hard Lesson, Falling Awake and Nora also available for purchase on kindle, hard copy and large print. You may also read a brief overview of all the novels written by Charles J Harwood on this blog.

Related links on my author website

The Stockholm syndrome relationship
The inner gremlins of kidnappers
What if human behavior had a voice?
Bernes' Games People Play in the Shuttered Room

OtherArticles on Writing

Practical advice on completing a novel

How to develop characters for films