When Eva Dunbar goes missing it takes a while for the police to realise that she is just one in a string of women who have gone throughout the North. Then a body is found and links are made with an old case where a woman was killed but before she died she claimed to have been held prisoner. For DI Bradshaw the case is complicated by the ongoing corruption in the police force and the antagonism of his colleagues to his use of the journalists Tom and Helen to support him. For their part Tom is juggling his young girlfriend and the needs of his old flame who has a shameful secret and is being blackmailed and Helen is vacillating between her ex and her feelings for Tom.
Again Linskey has written an excellent police procedural set across Durham and Northumbria and rooted in the less that pc times of the 1990s. Whilst mobile phones are around the internet isn't and good old-fashioned police work is the order of the day. However Linskey does have a thread running through his books about corruption and prejudice in the forces and this lifts his books from the mundane into something extra. ( )