Dear Amy

Margot Lewis, the prickly heroine of Callaghan’s solid debut, teaches at prestigious St. Hilda’s Academy in Cambridge, England. In her spare time, she writes the “Dear Amy” advice column for a local newspaper in her spare time. Meanwhile, Margot is about to get divorced from her handsome, philandering husband, Eddy, who knows more about her checkered history than she’d like. When she receives a letter purporting to be from Bethan Avery, a girl who disappeared as a teenager in 1998, Margot is unnerved, but becomes more so as more letters arrive, especially since they remind her of the recent disappearance of a St. Hilda’s student, 15-year-old Katie Browne, whom police are treating as a runaway, despite Margot’s suspicions. Margot teams with a Cambridge University criminologist, Martin Forrester, the head of the Multi-Disciplinary Historical Analysis Team, to analyze the letters, which appear to be written by Bethan. While the reader might guess the links between the current-day abduction and the earlier crime, Callaghan keeps the suspense high throughout. [em]Agent: Judith Murray, Greene and Heaton (U.K.). (Oct.) [/em]