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Found by Erin Kinsley - Review

Monday, February 3, 2025


I got this book in a sale that I bought seventeen books in but which only cost me £63! So I got some bargains. And I am hoping to make my way through this pile pretty soon. Let's see! I picked this up in the middle of January. I found it an odd book and I looked on Goodreads to see what criticisms people had. And while I basically enjoyed the story, I did think that some of the criticisms I read were totally valid. I'll get to that. 

So Evan is eleven years old and he goes missing one day after school. He has been at sports practice with his best mate, Stewie, and the lads were two of the last people in school. They walked out, went into the corner shop, and said goodbye at the bus stop. Evan wasn't seen again. DI Naylor - who is a likeable detective, I would read more books about her - and her colleagues tried their hardest to find him, but the trail was pretty cold. His parents, Claire and Matthew, are obviously devastated, as are his paternal grandparents, Joe and Doris (I think that's their names...) who live in Yorkshire. Claire and Matthew's marriage starts to fall apart; she is drinking too much. DI Naylor and co have to start looking at other cases. 

Then, months later, a man stops at a petrol station somewhere near Pontefract for petrol, and he realises there are sounds coming from the boot of a car. He confronts the driver and his passenger, and they take off. Police come and in the boot of the car they find Evan. 

He is alive, alright, but obviously traumatised. When he is returned to his parents, he is basically mute. He can't speak to the police about what he went through so they're a bit stuck on trying to catch the people who took him. Evan ends up staying with his grandparents a lot, and begins to come back to himself. 

The police get some breaks and end up on a massive chase looking for huge swathes of paedophiles. I quite like how it unravelled and how an ex colleague of Naylor's does some investigating for her. I also liked that the book was about the emotions of being a victim of a crime as well as the actualities of it. I liked Naylor and would read a series about her. 

However, I did see that people have compared this book to those by Cara Hunter and somehow I just can't agree, it's not as compelling as those at all. I also read that some people were let down by the outcome when the identities of the perpetrators aren't given much space and I do sort of get that, but I also think that they're kind of irrelevant to the rest of the story. The point is about the family and the victim. 

I'm giving this four out of five though, although it is really more of a 3.5. But I did like Erin Kinsley and I've got some more books of hers from the library to read soon. 


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