The Literate Kitty

The meandering, old roads of rural Northumberland, in the dark of a frigid winter’s night, with the season’s first blizzard raging away, as a cantankerous older woman grips the wheel of her ancient Land Rover, determined to make it home rather than giving in and finding a room somewhere. But, as fate would have it, she misses her turnoff in the whiteout her truck’s headlamps fail to penetrate, and ends up creeping down an unfamiliar road… nearly running into another vehicle, that has partially slid off the slippery, narrow lane. Grumbling, the woman hauls herself out of the Rover and makes her way to other car, where she finds the driver’s door wide open, but no driver in sight. One passenger, however, remains: a toddler, strapped into a baby seat, all alone in the frigid cold and dark. As put out as she might feel, though, the woman is nonetheless a Detective Inspector, and she isn’t about to let a child freeze to death… or its missing parent go unfound.  So begins Ann Cleeves’