Harley's Strongroom (A Psychological/Supernatural Thriller)

“Harley Palmer is Britain’s answer to Lisbeth Salander … and she wants to let you in.” Harley Palmer is a 12-year-old protégé at The Royal Ballet Academy. She succumbs to anorexia and is referred to psychiatrist Dr. Richard Carter. Richard Carter is a paedophile with a sick fascination for ballet dancers. In her twenties, Harley has a nervous breakdown and is committed to psychiatric hospital. Heavily sedated and teetering on the edge of insanity, Harley conjures a strongroom inside her mind … into which she lures the demons of Richard Carter’s creation. To keep the strongroom secure, Harley learns she must refuse to listen to (or engage with) the voices trapped within – voices intent on making her relive her past. Now in her thirties, Harley invites us to look through a keyhole into her strongroom. She hopes that what we see will explain her recent killing of a paedophile priest; why she’s in a hotel bar waiting for victim number two; and why the strongroom inside her mind has given rise to a prison in her loft: to hold the man recently knighted for his work with abused children: Sir Richard Carter. All the while, Harley’s estranged sister (given up for adoption as a baby) experiences Harley’s treatment at the hands of Richard Carter in her nightmares. Years later and before her death in a car accident, she pioneers a radical treatment for victims of child abuse: “In an ideal world I’d teach these kids how to build a strongroom inside their minds … a place to lock away and starve their inner demons.”