Little Girl Lost by Carol Wyer

This is a mixed bag of a book and I am still not entirely sure what to think of it.  Unusually for the genre the focus really isn't on the procedural side of things or the personality of the investigators.  Yes DI Carter is damaged but, although her personal losses are mentioned multiple times, we are not beaten over the head with it and she definitely doesn't let it cloud her work.  Yes, she does work more off her hunches rather than the evidence but not in an overtly "maverick" way.  So that was entirely refreshing, as was her relationships with other officers and the few scenes set within the station were full of the dark humour, pithy comments and camaraderie that we like to think exist within the Police.

The real problem comes with the actual series of crimes taking place in the book.  The opening abuse is needlessly explicit and seems designed to shock and appall rather than to set the scene for the events to come.  There are also sections where disbelief must be suspended - seriously, you can just change your name and move town and schools will enrol your child without any sort of information on their past academic history.  This is a contemporary tale so I found that completely unbelievable and everyone seems to have a secret identity.

The whole premise is that Alice wants revenge for the "abandonment" of her mother by the actor Paul Matthews.  After his son, Lucas, graphically assaults her as a small child they are thrown out and her mother turns to prostitution to survive; once she dies Alice feels duty bound to avenge her as everything that went wrong was all the fault of the Matthew's family.  Alice has multiple aliases that she has used over the years and the difficulty now is deciding which of the many female characters in the book is her - is she Abigail Thorne, Zoe Cooper, Claire Lewis, Rachel or someone we haven't even been introduced to yet.

Sadly, in an attempt to keep the reader guessing as to the true identities of every one of the women mentioned above the tale becomes confused rather than twisty.  The telling is cloudy and whilst it is good to be kept guessing for a change I did find myself frequently mentally disassociating from the story and trying desperately to marry the events together.  The obfuscation should have elevated the story but it was handled rather poorly in places but I do see light at the end of the tunnel for this series, a little more honing of her skills and we could have an excellent author in the genre.  I will try the next DI Carter book and may fall in love with the series who knows.

**Review originally published January 16th, 2018**