Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 3 January 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-297-867470
No-one knows exactly how
many children in the United
Kingdom go missing but experts have said
that a child goes missing every 5 minutes. Nearly all of these return home or
are otherwise accounted for. But not all.
In this novel three children go missing from much the same
area. The first is 10-year-old Leo Constantine from a village near Kielder Forest
in north-east England,
once an area of desolate moorland, now a
huge patchwork of conifer plantations, where Leo’s father Georgie Nixon is a
forestry worker. Several months later two young girls disappear: Becky Thomas,
9, neglected, alcoholic mother, father dead in Iraq; Karin Gilbey, also 9, much
loved daughter of prosperous middle-class parents.
When Leo disappears, such efforts as the authorities are
inclined to make are ineffective so his mother Mary seeks the help of Norman
Stokoe, recently-appointed Children’s Czar for the North-East. He, if anyone,
should be able to assist. But Norman,
mentally and emotionally inert, does not want to get involved. At the same time
Willie Craig is pursuing the story of Becky Thomas: as a reporter on a local
paper he is fed up with covering shop openings and planning committee meetings
and desperately wants a big story to enable him to break into the big time. Are
the two disappearances linked? And if Willie could do a hatchet job on Norman and his apparent
lack of interest so much the better.
Norman,
however, has been intrigued by photographs showing marks on Leo’s forehead,
hands and feet. They stir memories from his Catholic schooldays. And when
another little girl disappears Norman
stirs himself to search on the internet for child-abductors: all the known ones
are accounted for apart from one. Information about that one should also be
available but is not. Is there an Establishment/Government cover-up? At this
stage Pippa, Norman’s PA, is drawn into the
action; unlike Norman and Willie her main concern is for the children
themselves and her moral passion drives all three, along with Leo’s stepfather,
to the final extraordinary outcome in Kielder Forest.
I thought this book was remarkable and so well-written it
was a pleasure to read. I am normally allergic to any mention of the paranormal
in crime fiction; vampires, ghosts and zombies have no place in the genre. But
the other-worldly aspects of this book are so well-handled that they do not
jar, nor, for non-believers, is an excessive leap of faith required; a
considerable degree ambivalence is maintained throughout.
-----
Reviewer: Radmila May
Other books by Paul Torday: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, The Girl on the Landing,
The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers, More than You Can Say, Breakfast
at the Deja Vu (ebook), The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall, Theo
(ebook).
Paul Torday was
born in 1946 and read English Literature at Pembroke
College, Oxford. He spent the next 30 years working in
engineering and in industry, after which he scaled back his business
responsibilities to fulfil a long-harboured ambition - to write. He burst on to
the literary scene in 2006 with his first novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, an
immediate bestseller that has been sold in 19 countries. He is married with two
sons by a previous marriage and has two stepsons and lives close to the River
North Tyne.
No comments:
Post a Comment