BEFORE I SLEEP

DCI Bill Slider lands a case as puzzling as it is unwelcome.

Henry Holland’s wife has gone missing. Felicity Holland went out on her usual errands—a pottery class, lunch with some friends—and never came home. Since her husband is a historical novelist of some repute and an old schoolmate of Borough Commander Mike Carpenter, who admires his work, he phones him directly, and even though Felicity presumably disappeared from Notting Hill, not Shepherd’s Bush, Carpenter orders Slider to take on the investigation personally. The missing woman hasn’t left much of a trail, but the discovery of her handbag in Burnham Beeches, exactly the sort of venue that would be ideal for disposing of a body, turns up the heat, though not the light. The few leads Slider picks up point him toward Josh Milo, an old lover Felicity hadn’t seen in years; an unidentified, much younger man she repeatedly had lunch with; and her own father, Sir John Aubrey-Harris, Queen’s Counsel, a retired barrister so eminent that Slider dares not accuse him or even question him. To top it off, Holland keeps calling his higher-ups to complain about Slider’s lack of progress. “If ever he had been handed a poisoned chalice, this was it,” reflects Slider ruefully. The climactic developments in the case, when they arrive in good time, aren’t exactly surprising, but they’re highly satisfying. As a bonus, Slider gets something that might almost pass for an apology from one of the powerful people he’s been thrown up against.

A model British procedural with nary a wasted word, scene, or gesture.