Missing, Presumed (DS Manon #1) by Susie Steiner

Mid-December, and Cambridgeshire is blanketed with snow. Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date – the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace.

Over the airwaves come reports of a missing woman – door ajar, keys and phone left behind, a spatter of blood on the kitchen floor. Manon knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big.

Is Edith alive or dead? Was her ‘complex love life’ at the heart of her disappearance, as a senior officer tells the increasingly hungry press? And when a body is found, is it the end or only the beginning?

This story has short, easy to read chapters with each chapter telling the story from the perspective of a character. There is Manon and Davy, the detectives tasked with finding a missing young girl named Edith, and Miriam, the presumed missing girl’s mother. Although the story is about Edith’s disappearance, you learn so much more about the other character’s lives that Edith becomes almost an afterthought to their life stories.

 It’s a deceptively simple read but you’ll discover that it’s still a very richly detailed story. The characters are fully developed and I felt engaged right from the start. Also, Missing, Presumed is a great title because the reader does not find out until the very end if Edith is alive or not. The ending was surprising and I was satisfied with how everything was tied together. I will definitely recommend this book to friends.  


*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Roberta