A riveting psychological thriller from the Number One bestselling Queen of crime fiction – Val McDermid. In the Peak District village of Scardale, thirteen-year-old girls didn’t just run away. So when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of ’63, everyone knew it was a murder. Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well. A child herself when Alison vanished, decades on she still recalls the sense of fear as parents kept their children close, terrified of strangers. Now a journalist, she persuades DI George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison, the tantalizing leads and harrowing dead ends. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to stop the story – plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets and revelations. ‘One of the all-time greats – special in every way’ Lee Child ‘This book changed everything I thought I knew about crime fiction’ Belinda Bauer, bestselling author of Snap