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Trevor had been working for well over two hours when he thought he saw something sticking out of the dirt.
Leaning forward from his seat and rubbing the condensation from the inside window of the cab, he squinted to see what it was, and when he saw it, it took his breath away. He was looking at a human skull, and what was worse was that it seemed to be looking right back at him.

Guilt is often a huge motivator. And Inspector Alan Banks, rightly or not, feels guilty. He's decided to take a vacation in Greece, hoping to come to terms with his ex-wife getting remarried and having a baby and his own recent break up with Detective Inspector (DI) DI Anne Cabbott. When he reads in the newspaper that the recently found bones of a young boy have been positively identified as belonging to a boy he went to school with, he knows he has to go back to England and tell what he knows. As a young man, he was attacked shortly before his friend's disappearance. He didn't tell anyone, mostly because he managed to escape, he was playing where he wasn't supposed to be and he was skipping school...keeping his mouth shut would keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately, he has always blamed himself for Graham Marshall's disappearance...if he'd spoken up, perhaps the man would have been caught before he could hurt someone else. When another boy in a neighboring police jurisdiction disappears, it is uncertain whether he will find himself exonerated, or condemned by others.

In some ways, this book is really three stories. The first is that it's a bit of biography. We get to see a lot of Bank's personal life, his childhood as he explored the places where he grew up and the scene where he was attacked. This is the 13th Inspector Banks novel and so seeing more about this Inspector's past will be a treat for readers who've enjoyed Banks in the past. The two mysteries are not really Bank's case, although he helps as much as he can, and is instrumental in unraveling them both. Detective Inspector Anne Cabbott is hunting for the missing boy, DI Michelle Hart is tracking down the clues to discover what really happened to Graham Marshal. For a long time both cases seem their own entities, for what can a recent kidnapping have to do with a body that's been buried for well over a decade? Robinson deftly juggles these stories, making some compelling parallels and contrasts that keep the book flowing well. Anne makes a mistake that may well have cost Luke his life, while a killer has broken into Michelle's house, leaving the sliced up dress of her dead little girl on her bed as a warning. These details define and humanize the two female characters as they both struggle to prove their competence and their courage against an enemy that seems to have no motive.

I think the threading of the three stories and the interrelationship between the three characters really shines. Accompanied by an almost audible soundtrack of music reflecting the author's diverse tastes, it twists the story into different directions giving the reader a constantly changing and intriguing perspective.