Lost Girls (D I Kim Stone) by Angela Marsons

Lost Girls (D I Kim Stone) by Angela Marsons
Buy Lost Girls (D I Kim Stone) by Angela Marsons at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: Top class crime writing that has you on the edge of your seat. Highly recommended.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 320/10h34m	Date: November 2015
Publisher: Bookouture
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1785762178
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Charlotte and Amy were best friends: they seemed to do everything together and the trip to the swimming pool was no different. It was all carefully planned - they were to stay in the building until one of the parents arrived to pick them up. Only, it didn't work out like that: the mother's car was disabled and before the pick up time both parents had received a text message to say that the girls had been abducted. It would get worse too - the next communication would tell them that they would have to bid for the life of their child. The parents who bid the most would get their child back. The other would not return. It sounds unbelievable, but it had happened before. One child was released, but not even the body of the other child had been found.

Normally, D I Kim Stone would not have been considered to have sufficient experience to handle a case of this magnitude, but one of the parents knew her from their days in care together and Kim was the only police officer the mothers were prepared to speak to. She went along initially just to take the preliminary details ready to hand the case over to someone else, but partly because she felt she could achieve something and almost certainly because she'd been told she wasn't experienced enough to handle the case, she demanded the right to do it. And she won.

She's not unsupported though: there's her usual team and she's also got a profiler and a trained negotiator. The family liaison officer from the earlier case is also with the families. There's a news blackout, which, in all honesty, no one expects to last very long, but there's a big difference between a missing child, where the public might be able to help to find the child and an abducted child when the less publicity there is, the better. It's not easy to convince the parents that people shouldn't be out searching though - and even harder when the parents are set against each other.

I'd already listened to and read Silent Scream and Evil Games, so I knew that I could expect top class writing and superb plotting. I'd already been hooked by the characters, Stone in particular, with her acid tongue, sharp brain and barely concealed vulnerability. The dynamics of the group are superb and ring true: I was only a few of the (short) chapters in before I had to know what happened. The Law of Happy Endings tells you that both girls are going to be rescued, but Angela Marsons doesn't need to abide by such laws and the ending took me completely by surprise.

I listed to an audio recording by Jan Cramer, which I bought myself. She has a good range of voices: they weren't all entirely convincing but I was so taken up by the story that it really didn't matter. In fact I've already bought the next book in the series.

The books all work well as stand alones, but if you are going to read the series you might get more out of it by starting at the beginning.

Angela Marsons' D I Kim Stone Novels in Chronological Order

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