Debbie James from The Bookshop Kibworth recommends Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
Mid-December, and Cambridgeshire is blanketed with snow. Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date – the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace.
Over the airwaves come reports of a missing woman – door ajar, keys and phone left behind, a spatter of blood on the kitchen floor. Manon knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big.
Is Edith alive or dead? Was her ‘complex love life’ at the heart of her disappearance, as a senior officer tells the increasingly hungry press? And when a body is found, is it the end or only the beginning?
Debbie’s Recommendation
“I’m seldom tempted to read crime novels, but the buzz around Missing, Presumed at the HarperCollins indie day was not to be ignored. Then I won the fingerprint competition attached to the book so it got promoted to the top of my TBR pile! I loved it. Nothing about it was predictable. It’s an unusual story as there’s no body initially and you’re not really sure what the crime is you’re trying to solve. The book’s chapters are each named after one of the characters, cleverly shifting focus between them, a la The Girl on The Train. I think Missing, Presumed knocks that bestseller off the rails though and we’ll be piling it high on our Table of Temptation come 25th February.”
Missing, Presumed
Susie Steiner
25 Feb 2016
£12.99
Hardback
9780008123284
The Borough Press
