Changes

This is the third book of Bauer's to feature young Stephen and local bobby, Jonas Holly. Poor Stephen has already been through a lot in his life as readers of the first two books will be well aware. Technically, it is quite possible to read this book as a stand alone, but I wouldn't advise it and in particular I wouldn't advise the reading pattern that I adopted which, for the first quarter of the book in particular, left me mindful of school days where I'd skived a particularly important lesson only to find that the subsequent lesson referred back repeatedly to the one I'd missed. Let me explain. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Bauer's first book, ''Blacklands'' but somehow her second, ''Dark Side'' remains sitting on my Amazon 'wish list'. Stupidly, I jumped at the chance to read her latest and thereby missing out on the second adventure.

The downside to this is that to explain the mental state of Jonas in particular we have to get a lot of back story that I assume is in the second book. Almost exactly a quarter of the way through the book, DI Reynolds thought my own concerns when Bauer writes of him that 'It was the memory of his previous failure on Exmoor that haunted him as much as this new one unfolding'. Quite so. Once we get drawn into the present case, the book again soars into Bauer's darkly twisted mind. In particular there are a couple of short extracts told in the first person from the kidnapper that are suddenly thrown to the reader that are genuinely creepy. Although once we know who the kidnapper is, the circumstances are hardly less dark.