Taken by Dinuka McKenzie

After enjoying the award winning The torrent I immediately picked up the second in the series featuring Detective Kate Miles. Back from parental leave and struggling with her job, Kate is faced with pressure from home as her husband has lost his part-time job and a scandal is hovering over her father’s activities when he was in the police force. When baby Sienna goes missing, Kate is faced with a media circus about the case while desperately searching through clues to what has happened. Is the husband to blame or has an abductor stolen the baby? Is the violent ex-husband to blame?

McKenzie brings to life the pressure that a young woman has trying to juggle a complex job and the demands of being a mother of a baby and a four-year-old, a situation not often seen in mystery novels. Kate is competitive and her offsider Josh is keen to take over the case, and the struggle that she has to convince her boss that she can do the job is one that women will relate to.

The police procedures that are undertaken to try and find a missing child are vividly described and the reader is left feeling emotionally invested in the feelings of the mother who lost a child. Kate too is emotionally invested as Baby Sienna is the same age as her daughter Amy and she knows how she would be feeling if that had happened to her.

Kate Miles is a detective whose investigative skill at turning up clues will keep the reader rivetted while the many twists and turns ramp up the tension. I immediately went on to find Tipping Point, the next in the series. Readers who enjoy books by Chris Hammer and Jane Harper may like this series.

Themes: Detectives, Missing persons.

Pat Pledger