Part of Inspector Lynley, book 3
First published 2007
Thirteen-year-old Matthew Whately disappears from Bredgar Chambers, an exclusive boarding school in West Sussex. Inspector Thomas Lynley gets pulled into the case when the boy's housemaster calls for help. The housemaster happens to be Lynley's former classmate. Lynley arrives with Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James. What begins as a search for a missing child becomes a hunt for a murderer when Matthew turns up dead. The investigators question prefects, teachers, and students who knew the victim. They discover that dark secrets lurk within the school's privileged walls. The closed world of the boarding school conceals something deeply sinister. As Lynley and Havers dig deeper into Matthew's death, the case forces them to confront their own painful memories. Their emotional involvement threatens to compromise their judgment. Meanwhile, the killer prepares to strike again.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective, academic
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: emotional-involvement, murder-investigation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Bredgar Chambers, West Sussex
Period: 20th-century
432 pages · Paperback · Bantam
Content warnings: death, murder