A child disappears in this country every five minutes.

When three children go missing in Northumberland, the newly appointed 'Children's Czar' shrugs it off as an inevitable reality of the grim statistics, until he is confronted by a young hack keen to make his name through bringing a positive outcome to the proceedings.

This book starts as a wry and cynical look at government then moves through the nightmare of parents having lost a child. It becomes a crime novel with the police and the establishment as much the villains as the perpetrator. As the story progresses, it becomes clear this will not end happily ever after. Indeed, as we learn about the killer, the book takes a gruesome and grisly turn. Although the subject matter becomes horrific, the religious mysticism rather puzzling, and the discovery in the forest quite terrifying, it is almost impossible to put the book down. The characters are compelling and the pace is well pitched. It is bleak, unsettling and haunting. This is a tough book to recommend. As a parent, could you bear to read it?