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IN BITTER CHILL
by Sarah Ward
Minotaur, September 2015
314 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 0571320988


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In this slow-paced police procedural, Bampton, England CID re-opens a cold case of child abduction.

Dramatis personae: Rachel Jones, abducted as a child and escaped, now a genealogist; Rachel's flame Richard Weiss, a lawyer; Rachel's grandmother, Nancy, holder of secrets; Penny Lander, teacher retired from where the missing girls had gone to school; Detective Sergeant Palmer, who has cold feet about his upcoming wedding; Detective Inspector Francis Sadler; Detective Constable Connie Childs; Superintendent Llewellyn, who investigated the original crime.

In the Wilton Hotel in Derbyshire, an elderly woman, Yvonne Jenkins, overdoses on medication to end her life. Sadly, the death would be little noted: the old woman was long-divorced. She has committed suicide, however, on the anniversary of her little daughter Sophie's kidnapping and disappearance, more than thirty years ago. The strange coincidence of her passing causes the local police to re-open the case of her daughter's abduction.

Thirty years ago, Yvonne's daughter and a girlfriend had walked to school together. Their mothers had had them walk together for safety and had lectured them about talking to strangers. Nevertheless, when a woman opens her car door and invites them inside, the girls climb in. One of the girls is never seen again. The other is found wandering down a road, with most of the memory of her abduction missing.

The girl who survived, Rachel, supports herself as a genealogist specializing in maternal lines. Her own mother, who had supported her young daughter after her husband died, and her fiery grandmother and great-grandmother aroused her interest in women who kept their households together despite the odds of doing so. When the police begin re-investigating Sophie Jenkins's death, Rachel is drawn into the solving of the cold case; and she uses genealogical data to unravel parts of the mystery.

The novel proceeds as solid police work and dogged genealogical research. The narrative moves back and forth between the present and the date 20 January, 1978, when the two girls were kidnapped. Readers see the kidnapping from a child's point of view, without the analytical capability of identification of suspects or understanding of events. In flashbacks, however, the events of the kidnapping unfold with great clarity. When a schoolteacher who was teaching on the day of the two girls' disappearance is found murdered, the police and Rachel, operating independently, work to match the fragmented but clear memory from 1978 to a modern-day compulsion to murder.

§ Dr. Cathy Downs teaches American literature at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and is a fan of the well-turned whodunit.

Reviewed by Cathy Downs, October 2015

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