Missing Person: Alice: a twisty, pathological thriller beginning the Finder Mysteries

'Excellently lean and tense crime novel with a touch of the nouveau roman about it' Ian Rankin 'Mason has been mainlining Simenon for a while, and it shows' Mick Herron 'It's like the provincial British version of Maigret' Clare Chambers The people I work with call me 'Finder'. I'm a specialist, a finder of missing people. July 2015, Sevenoaks. 12-year-old schoolgirl Alice Johnson went missing while doing her paper round, her bag found discarded on the pavement. At 08.00, she was spotted standing in heavy rain at the side of the busy by-pass. At 11.00, she was seen talking to the driver of a black car in Tonbridge. After that, nothing. Alice was never found. Nine years later the body of another schoolgirl, Joleen Price, is pulled from a nearby lake and a local man named Vince Burns detained. Convinced that Burns is guilty in both cases, SIO Dave Armstrong calls in the Finder to investigate the earlier disappearance. Interviewing those who thought they knew her, the Finder gradually reveals a hidden Alice, a girl of surprising contradictions.