Missing

Jackson’s perceptive debut introduces Martha Allen, a Scotland Yard detective who’s plunged back into a case that’s stayed with her for three decades. On an August night in 1990, five-month-old Bella Carpenter was reported missing from her London hotel room. Allen, then a newly minted detective inspector on the Metropolitan Police Force, was assigned to the case, and no leads emerged until her sharp-eyed subordinate, detective constable Manley Desbury, noticed that Bella’s father was only pretending to cry during a press conference. Spurred by Allen’s suspicion that Bella was dead before she disappeared, the detectives investigated the couple but failed to turn up anything conclusive. Eventually a teenager named Nell Beatty returned Bella to the police, and senior officers played it up as a triumphant resolution—even though Nell disappeared through a station window before she could be questioned. In the present, Nell’s body is found on a bench in Bristol, prompting Allen and Desbury to revisit Bella’s case off the books. Jackson gets the pace and details of a high-pressure investigation just right, mixing plodding procedural work and bolts of inspiration for a bracingly realistic depiction of crime-solving. Fans of moody British mysteries will cheer Jackson’s auspicious entry into the field. Agent: Laura Macdougall, United Agents. (Mar.)