Time of Death

Book excerpt: Two British police detectives take on a case close to home: “One of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today” (Gillian Flynn). One of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 Great Summer Thrillers” Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend, DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s hometown in Warwickshire. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect’s wife as an old school friend, and reluctantly returns home for the first time in twenty-five years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have got the wrong man. There is still an extremely clever killer on the loose—and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive . . . “Some ingenious forensic footwork. What is most impressive about the novel, however, is the astute observation of the beleaguered Bates family, who turn in on themselves as the inhabitants of the town turn on them.” —The Guardian