Matilda has always been haunted throughout this series by the cases that the one she hunted got away...or the more accurately, "the one she didn't get back." The book will play havoc with your emotions...the family is filled with so much emotional baggage it seems to almost ooze from their pores. Truly the mothers torment by this girls disappearance is almost painful to read. I began to distrust almost everything the family said and did and so did the police. Few authors can produce the effect on me that Michael Wood can. He always portrays such brilliantly vivid, true to life characters in his stories that the reader just has to read one more page...until one more page turns into no more pages and your realize that you have had the adventure of another great case with an ending so full of promise that has left you hungry for more. ( )

Wow! Loved this book. I’d not read the others in this series but this didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this book.

This book starts off with a powerful prologue that grabs you straight away with a boy going into a French Police Station saying he is a child who has been kidnapped. Then straightaway we lead into another child going missing in Sheffield, England.

This book gripped me from the very first page and never let me go. A great storyline that revealed itself as the book went on. Alongside this you have a great group of characters with interesting lives that you want to know more about. Plenty of action throughout the book with great interaction between the characters, and some good dialogue. Then on top of this we have a great ending that had plenty of suspense and tension. For me this book had everything and I strongly recommend it

Matilda Darke is a great lead character and this book has made me want to go away and get hold of the other books in this series. Most definitely a five star read.

I would like to say thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for providing a copy of this book to me for an open and honest review. ( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I have read each of the novels in the series and am sad to report that the on-going Carl Meghan storyline (the details of which have to be rehearsed at the beginning of every single book) is still going strong. Actually, at times in this one it was more interesting than the main story. The plot here concerns the disappearance of nine year-old Keeley, for whom a ransom demand is soon made, despite the fact that the family don't have any real money. Matilda immediately deduces that the demand was a hoax and that the girl is already dead. This seemed a bit of a leap to me, but not such a leap as the perpetrator knowing (how?) that the case will inevitably be allocated to Matilda and that it will bring back memories for her and for the press of the missing Carl.

There is a fair amount of description of the various detectives' personal lives, most of which added to the story by rounding out their characters (I particularly enjoyed Matilda's friendship with Adele, and Chris' relationship with Scott) but the Aaron strand required knowledge of the previous book in the series and drew me out of the story - it didn't really add anything except perhaps being as reminder of how long it takes for cases to reach court.

I found this a page-turner until near the end, where there was a prolonged river rescue scene which was dull and which I skimmed. There were a lot of deaths towards the end and a number of extremely gruesome and unsavoury revelations, with the family in question proving 'dysfunctional' in more or less every way possible. You'll have to read it yourself to see if Carl made it home. ( )