This is one of several books I read before Christmas that got put aside and
forgotten for a time. Mysteries are the type of book I read but don’t retain
well which means if they aren’t reviewed quickly, they get passed over for
more recent fare. This one, however, stuck.

It takes place in a small village in England. Years before the neighboring
village had been evacuated and abandoned because a dam had been built, after
much local political wrangling, and the village was on the site of the
reservoir below it. Just before the villagers leave, little girls begin
disappearing. The bodies are never found and the snatchings stop when the
village is drowned. The police, including a young Dalziel, never catch the
kidnapper though the main suspect is thought to be a slightly touched boy
from the village who also disappears after the village is flooded. Then,
after years of relative calm, the snatchings begin again. And an older,
wiser Dalziel and his partner, Pascoe, are brought in to try to figure out
who and why.

There were several things that interested me about the book. One was the
mystery within the mystery. In order to figure out the modern crimes,
Dalziel must recreate and solve the old crime. The major characters from the
previous crime scenes have either died or grown up or moved away and he is
working against time and lack of evidence to figure out the mystery. Not to
mention that the crime scenes have been under water for years.

The other is the use of diary entries by a young women from the village
interspersed into the narrative action. Her story becomes a secondary plot
line that weaves it’s way into the main criminal investigation. And in the
end, how she figures in the whole situation was a complete surprise to me. I
didn’t see it coming, at all.

It’s always a delight to find a new author who writes mysteries with the
emphasis on the detection and the puzzle and not on the gory details of the
crime. This is one of the latest ones Hill has written and I am doubly
delighted to have more to look forward to. I gather there is a long history
of cooperation and partnership between the two detectives, Dalziel and
Pascoe, that has developed as the books were published. Hopefully, they are
all still in print.