Immensely enjoyable read set in Northumbria and featuring DS Lucas Black and fast track graduate detective Beth. An unlikely pairing and one Beth is unsure about herself as all the rumours and online information she has gleaned speak of an ex army man who as a firearms officer for the police killed a man...
However the two work well together and are fantastic characters with plenty of banter and dry humour in the conversations between them. So much so, I would love this to be the first book in a series of their police adventures and investigations.
There is a huge cast of suspicious candidates for the disappearance of Alice Teale and the book explores the investigation, the interviews, the smokescreens, the conflicting evidence and the lies people in the small community are telling. The duo are determined to uncover what happened the day Alice left school and we get to revisit the evidence through the perspectives of all the 'persons of interest' the police talk to as well as carefully selected entries from the journal that Alice kept but which has also gone missing.
Fast paced, tightly plotted and littered with suggestions of guilt in one camp, then another, then another, until there are so many possibilities the reader just has to get to the end to discover the truth. And when you do it is sadly a very believable and twisted tale indeed.
Fans of crime thrillers will not be disappointed.