MOURNING THE LITTLE DEAD

As if the recent strangling of six-year-old Sarah Clarke out at Philby weren’t sordid enough, DI Alec Friedman and his Ingham Division colleagues are overwhelmed by an even darker case when someone reports finding a written confession among a dead man’s effects to the murder of schoolgirl Helen Jones 23 years ago. The identities of both informant and confessor remain a carefully guarded secret while the police search for Helen’s body, and the veil of secrecy is a particular agony to Alec’s lover, Naomi Blake, the best friend who’d quarreled with Helen the day before she’d gone missing. Sidelined from her own police work by progressive blindness, Naomi must rely on Alec to bring her the news that will finally end the torment of her guilt. But it looks as if Alec’s news can only muddle matters even worse. Gary Williams, the warehouseman from the notorious Radleigh Estate he picks as the most likely suspect in Sarah’s death, not only proves an alibi but sues the police force. The revelation of the confessor’s identity, when it finally comes, is flatly unbelievable. And the tip on where Helen is buried leads eventually to the discovery of an unidentified second body. As the mystery gets more and more tangled, only one certainty remains: Sooner or later, Naomi and her loyal seeing-eye dog will come face-to-face with a killer.

Adams (Angel Eyes, not reviewed, etc.) hasn’t mastered Minette Walters’s remorseless drive toward closure—the waters here are still getting deeper when the curtain comes down—but there are plenty of grim pleasures along the way.