Missing Person: Alice

Excellently lean and tense crime novel with a touch of the nouveau roman about it Ian Rankin Mason has been mainlining Simenon for a while and it shows Mick Herron The very definition of unputdownable David Peace It s like the provincial British version of Maigret Clare Chambers The people I work with call me Finder I m a specialist a finder of missing people July 2015 Sevenoaks 12 year old schoolgirl Alice Johnson went missing while doing her paper round her bag found discarded on the pavement At 08 00 she was spotted standing in heavy rain at the side of the busy by pass At 11 00 she was seen talking to the driver of a black car in Tonbridge After that nothing Alice was never found Nine years later the body of another schoolgirl Joleen Price is pulled from a nearby lake and a local man named Vince Burns detained Convinced that Burns is guilty in both cases SIO Dave Armstrong calls in the Finder to investigate the earlier disappearance Interviewing those who thought they knew her the Finder gradually reveals a hidden Alice a girl of surprising contradictions Seeking answers from her divorced parents an over protective mother a negligent father the Finder is forced to consider violently opposing narratives Was the timid 12 year old