In Lisa Jewell’s newest psychological thriller, “It Could Have Been Her,” she brings back a character from her last thriller, “Don’t Let Him In.” In that novel, Jane Trevally was a minor character, an older woman who helped solve the mystery. In this new release, Jane makes a fabulous, complex, very relatable main character, and her Jessica Fletcher-like investigation into a missing woman uncovers chilling secrets that a family had desperately tried to hide.

Jane is living a rather lonely life in the English countryside. Her huge rambling old house, emphasis on “old,” is decrepit, and she doesn’t have the wherewithal to repair it. She lives there with her four large dogs and her troubled memories of a horrible childhood. Other memories are much better, including those of her two marriages to very wealthy men, both of whom she is on good terms with. She also is close to a plethora of stepchildren she helped raise.

But Jane longs for the liveliness of London, eating in fabulous restaurants, shopping in exclusive boutiques, and entertaining friends and family. But she also can’t seem to break free of the family home, which like an albatross prevents her from doing what she really wants.

When she finds a small white dog running free near her home one afternoon while walking her dogs, she takes it home. The next day, the local vet provides the information from the dog’s microchip (note to readers: make sure your dogs and cats are microchipped!), and Jane is able to take the dog back to its owner.

Strangely, the owner and the address registered on the microchip is in London, nowhere near where she found the dog. And as she approaches the resident with Hugo, the dog, a horrible memory from her past arises. Hugo lives in a house where Jane was taken decades before, and she was convinced that she barely escaped from that home with her life. An older man she met in a pub offered her employment and took her to his house. But once there, she sensed something was off. When she accidentally knocked over the martini he had prepared for her and he was visibly angry, Jane managed to escape. But the incident was etched into her brain. And now, she’s at the same house in mysterious circumstances returning a dog.

But the man who answers the door seems genuinely happy to see the dog and the dog is happy to be home. So Jane’s fears are assuaged until she returns home and realizes that her neighbor, who lets out a cottage on her property, reported her tenant missing. The woman, who arrived with a small white dog, disappeared one day leaving behind all her clothing and toiletries. She had given her name as Rose White.

As Jane investigates the disappearance and the mystery behind the house, which she strongly believes are connected, it turns out that Rose White is really Daisy Black, one of the inhabitants of that strange, foreboding house. Jane’s narrative is told in third person as we follow her investigation and her logic as she slowly comes to understand that life in that house was every bit as abnormal and abusive as the house that she grew up in — the house she currently lives in.

What is a bit confusing at first is that there are chapters with other characters’ names, which are written in first person narrative. Stuart, the man Jane meets who lives in the house with Hugo the dog, has narratives which state, in addition to his name, the years elapsed since the time that that chapter’s narrative is set, for example “Stuart, six years earlier.” The other narratives by other characters do not provide a time setting; some are set many years before and some are much more current.

But soon it all become clear and the sickness and warped personas living in that house are clearly delineated. We are also privy to Jane’s clever and agile reasoning as she ferrets out information to get at the bottom of the mystery: where did Daisy Black go? Is Daisy alive?

This novel has some really rotten characters, but there are also characters whose truly moral failings can be understood in light of the wretched childhood they endured. Although by the same token, Jane’s childhood was practically as horrible, and yet she is a responsible person who wants to do the right thing and help people.

What Jewell really forces readers to consider is how our upbringing affects us and whether family is forged by blood or emotion. Will Jane be able to break the bonds that tie her to the family mansion or will she be able to free herself of both the burden and some of the memories? Jane Trevally is a fabulous main character, and we can only hope this is just the first of a “Jane Trevally” series of fabulous mystery novels with Jane and her stepson Dexter solving crimes and living their best lives.

Enjoy the book in which Jane is introduced, “Don’t Let Him In,” and other Lisa Jewell novels like “The Family Upstairs.”

This review is based on the advance reader’s edition provided by Atria, the publisher, for review purposes.