Synopsis
Deep in Derbyshire, a young girl disappears while walking her dog in the woods. A rookie detective is assigned to the case, and must ferret out the truth in a small, inbred, closely guarded community.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-09-17 |
| Size | | Height: | 7.0 in | | Width: | 4.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
On a freezing day in December 1963, thirteen-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from her village. Nothing will ever be the same again for the inhabitants of the isolated hamlet in the English countryside. Newly promoted inspector George Bennett is determined to solve the case-even if it is just to bring home a daughter's dead body to her mother.As days progress, the likelihood that Alison has been murdered increases when a gruesome discovery is made in a cave. But with no corpse, the barest of clues, and an investigation that turns up more questions than answers, Bennett finds himself up against a stonewall1/4until he learns the shocking truth-a truth that will have far-reaching consequences. Decades later, Bennett finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote. But just when the book is poised for publication, he pulls the plug on it without explanation. He has new information that he refuses to divulge. Refusing to let the past remain a mystery, Catherine sets out to uncover what really happened to Alison Carter. But the secret is one she might wished she'd left buried on that cold, dark day thirty-five years ago.
Industry Reviews
"Val McDermid...generates not suspense, exactly, but curiosity and, finally, whiplash surprise. Her focus is on the inner lives of her policemen as they come to terms with bottom-of-hell horror and grave error."
Atlantic Monthly - Jack Beatty (10/20/2000)
"Val McDermid's elegiac study of a heinous crime and its aftermath...is very much in the Jamesian mode, both in its inventive use of the devices of detection and its mournful view of murder as a moral reckoning."
New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio (10/09/2000)
"[P]ossibly the most ingenious mystery I've read... [S]tarts out as a classic English police procedural, then ventures, in the last one hundred pages, into something like pop metafiction, providing a startling new angle on everything that has gone before. It knocked the wind out of me."
Salon - Charles Taylor (01/03/2000)
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
