Winner of the British Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger

Winner of the Best British Crime Novel Barry Award

IMPAC Award Finalist

"A superb mystery—excruciatingly suspenseful, rich in character and all too real in its depiction of the horrific possibilities lurking in the margins of the mundane."—The Washington Post Book World

Retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder has fled to the Cornish coast, but he can’t escape the past. Susan Blacklock would be thirty now. But fourteen years ago she disappeared, and the case has gone unsolved. Not that Elder hadn’t had his suspects. Now, with one of them out on parole, pretty Emma Harrison has gone missing. Just as Elder’s knowledge becomes crucial to the official investigation, he unwittingly becomes vital to the crime’s on-going perpetration. For with cryptic messages on seaside postcards and a few planted clues, the killer is drawing Elder into the very heart of the matter. Elder’s teenage daughter is already there. In the first of the Frank Elder mysteries, before Ash & Bone and Darkness & Light, John Harvey sets in motion the events from which Elder’s family will never recover.

"Even grittier that the Resnick novels—but just as thoughtful and emotionally gratifying. It seems past time for Mr. Harvey to be recognized—alongside Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson—as a modern master of the smart, hard-edged British police-procedural."—Wall Street Journal

"A major novel: thrilling, urgent, important."—Literary Review (London)

John Harvey is the author of ten critically acclaimed Charlie Resnick novels and three Frank Elder mysteries. He lives in Great Britain.