Amazon.co.uk Review
Ruth Pierce and her husband try unsuccessfully to cope with the anguish of their daughter’s disappearance, but their marriage can’t take the strain of their terrible loss, and they separate. Years later, Ruth marries for a second time, but (to her horror) her second daughter, Beatrice, also disappears.
Detective Will Grayson is on the trail of the creepy Mitchell Roberts, a paedophile who has been released from prison, and Grayson makes it clear that he is on Roberts’ case as the latter begins his old tricks by hanging around schools. Grayson and Helen Walker (who is having an affair with an older married colleague) discover that matters at stake here are not just the protection of children from dangerous human predators – and issues such as the freedom of the individual become crucial, as lives are put at risk.
John Harvey, as ever, is able to freight such weighty matters into his narrative without ever obscuring the essential purpose of the crime novel: to compel the attention and to entertain. The entertainment here is of the disturbing variety, as so often with this author. --Barry Forshaw
Review
Impassioned, at times heartbreaking story… confirms Harvey as one of our most accomplished writers in any genre. --The Sunday Telegraph
