Book review – Little girl lost by Brian McGilloway: Introducing Lucy Black, a hard headed detective in a book set exclusively in Northern Ireland

I wrote in a previous post about Brian McGilloway’s book The Nameless Dead as I found it so impressive.  Little Girl Lost is not part of the Inspector Devlin series, but introduces a new character Lucy Black, a Detective Sergeant, with the setting exclusively in Northern Ireland.  

The police are focused on finding Kate McLaughlin, the kidnapped daughter of a local property developer when Black is called out late at night by someone who has seen a girl wandering in the snow covered wood.  Black is surprised when she finds the wandering girl is not the kidnap victim.  The traumatised girl refuses to speak and Black is assigned to work with the Public Protection Unit to track down the missing girl’s family.  Lucy follows the trail, and finds clues that link the two cases together, annoying Chief Superintendent Travers, who seems to want to keep her away from the McLaughlin investigation.  

On the personal side, Lucy’s trying to care for her father who has first stage Alzheimer’s, has a bad relationship with her estranged mother who happens to be her ACC and if that’s not enough, decides she needs to track down “Janet”, an unknown person from the past who her father keeps confusing her with!  Lucy works out the “killer clue” and wraps up the kidnapping, helping to rescue Kate McLaughlin, although she astutely realises there’s more to the kidnapping than first appears to be the case.  The past has reared its ugly head in a way that nobody imagined.

I thought this book was excellent.  The characters were realistic and the setting was painted vividly, if frighteningly, using both scenes from the present and flashbacks from the past.  The particular strength of this novel and McGilloway’s previous books is that his plots are simple but well developed.  He doesn’t go for outlandish way out ideas, but sticks to a simple story, which works extremely well.  I’d certainly recommend this book both for McGilloway fans and if you just want a good crime book to read.

I’ve just found out that Lucy Black will be back shortly in a new novel Hurt (hardback in October, paperback & Kindle in November).  I’ll keep you posted with more news and a review as soon as I can.

Romancrimeblogger

PS – Today, 15 September, the Kindle price for this book is only 59p!!