The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer

 

Anna Buck's five year old son Daniel has been missing for several months. Every day she obsessively scrubs clean the footprints that he made in the drying concrete outside his home just before he vanished seemingly into thin air.  He walked out of the front door that had been left open by his Dad James and hasn't been seen since. After getting a leaflet through the door for a psychic meeting held at a local church Anna decides to attend and meets Richard Latham.  She's hoping that Daniel is still alive and that Richard will be able to see where he is so her son can be returned home to her safely.

 

Detective Chief Inspector John Marvel previously worked on the case of missing twelve year old girl Edie Evans. She's been gone for over a year and there's still no sign of her, just her battered bike that was found. Marvel even used Richard Latham despite not believing in psychics. Fifteen months on the case still haunts John and he's desperate to solve it and hopefully find the girl alive.

 

I've enjoyed all of Belinda Bauer's crime novels so far including this one. The characters in The Shut Eye all seem very real to life, you get a real insight into Anna's suffering and the decline in her mental health, none of which is surprising after all she and her husband have been through. I always think that the author's books are as much about the lives of the characters as they are finding out the culprit of the crime itself. Despite the subject matter there are also some light hearted moments in the story, Marvel having to try and solve the disappearance of the Chief Superintendents dog and the amateur psychics attempts to contact the dead at the meeting immediately spring to mind. I rattled through this in a couple of days, it's a well written crime novel that grabbed me from the start and wouldn't let go.

 

Thanks to Transworld and Netgalley for a copy of this in return for an honest review

 

 

Rating: 4 out of 5

 

Published by Transworld Digital/Bantam Press on 12th March 2015