A bitter winter's morning is no time for a child to be out
walking alone in woodland... the milkman spots her and
phones the police. A girl is known to be missing in the
area, but not, as it turns out, this LITTLE GIRL LOST.
Detective Sergeant Lucy Black finds a silent, hypothermic
eight-year-old in the snow and stays with her in the
hospital. Somebody must know who she is.
Set in scenic Derry, now a co-operating town with echoes of
a troubled past, the tale focuses on Lucy Black and her
colleagues as an investigation gets under way. Settling
down to phone schools, half of whose pupils are home
because of snow, Lucy notices small high windows so that
office workers won't be easy targets, leftover from the
disturbances. Forensics tests reveal some interesting
leads but the child still remains mute. The other missing
girl, Kate, is sixteen. Kate's father has amassed wealth
through shrewd property deals, and perhaps someone will
come looking for a ransom. Street camera footage gives the
first clue to the teen's abductor. Then an aggrieved member
of the public adds a tip. Following it up however turns the
situation from bad to worse.
Lucy has her own family difficulties; her father's wits are
wandering, and she needs to arrange for someone to sit with
him while she's absent. This makes her a sympathetic
character, as if it wasn't enough that her superior officer
likes touching women officers and thinks women are good for
family liaison work and not CID. However, I disliked the
way that she immediately complains about being taken off
the case of the more prominent Kate.
Derry used to be famous for shirt making, but a trader says
that today the garments are made in India and sold through
local agents. Some people still resent the police and Lucy
is warned that going to an interview alone could be
dangerous. Northern Ireland may be enjoying blessed peace,
but the echoes of the past imbue this third DS Black
story
with character. Maybe it's just the wintry setting, in a
recession-struck town close to mountainous Donegal and the
North Sea, but Brian McGilloway's police procedural tale
seems gritty and bleak, where death is brutal and
homelessness is hopelessness. Kate has left a trail of
charms from her charm bracelet, the only sign that this
LITTLE GIRL LOST is alive. Read this assured detective
tale and follow her trail.
A breathtaking new crime thriller from the author of the
acclaimed Inspector Devlin series
Midwinter. A child is found wandering in an ancient
woodland, her hands covered in blood. But it is not her own.
Unwilling—or unable—to speak, the only person she seems to
trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective
Sergeant Lucy Black. Soon afterwards, DS Black is baffled to
find herself suddenly moved from a high-profile case
involving a kidnapping of another girl, a prominent
businessman’s teenage daughter. At home, Black is struggling
with caring for her increasingly unstable father, and trying
to avoid conflict with her frosty mother—who also happens to
be the Assistant Chief Constable. As she tries to identify
the unclaimed child, Black begins to realize that her case
and the kidnapping may be linked by events from the grimmest
days of the country’s recent history, events that also
defined her own trouble childhood. Little Girl Lost is a
devastating crime thriller about corruption, greed, and
vengeance, and a father’s love for his daughter.
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