As the local police have no interest in alternate theories or suspects, he looks into the crimes himself - and the further he investigates, the more it looks as though Bates has been expertly framed. However, I doubt that anyone new to Billingham would manage that as they probably wouldn't know where to look for clues. Good story line, probably helped in my head by the familiarity of most of the locations and experience of what they are like when they flood. There are no quick solutions here but a story that unfolds like the petals of a rose revealing a nasty underbelly and one shocking revelation concerning one of the players with a personal secret to unfold.

It's interesting to see the story from the perspective of the family of the accused, although they're all so unlikeable I couldn't develop much sympathy for them. That line is drawn when two girls go missing and Linda’s husband is taken in for questioning based upon some strong evidence and the race is on to find the missing girls. The plot element on which this gruesome mystery turns is certainly one of the cleverest and most satisfying that I've read for ages.Detectives Tom Thorne and Helen Weekes (his girlfriend) are holidaying in the Cotswolds when news comes through that the husband of an old friend of hers, Linda Bates, has been arrested on suspicion of the kidnap and murder of two young girls in the fictional towns of Dorbrook and Polesford in Warwickshire.

And it was not a “cosy mystery” – which I rarely like – and there was not much graphic violence – which I also don’t like.Unusually for a crime novel this book is as much about what happens to the family of a suspect when they are arrested as it is about the victims as well as the who, how and why element, and I really enjoyed it. I love the relaxed and unpretentious style of Billingham and how he expertly portrays Thorne as a loner with very few friends apart from the somewhat colourful police pathologist Phil Hendricks. is almost satisfying, the original case of the missing girls is cleared up but there is more happening that reaches beyond the last page of this novel; I was disappointed when it came to the end, I wanted more! Still it’s a well written, interesting book that jogs along nicely but didn’t have that ooomph that I would need to elevate it more than a 3⭐️review.