Evan's Gate By Rhys Bowen

Evan Evans is now a newly promoted policeman in Wales near Mt. Snowdon. He and his bride to be, Bronwen, have bought a little cottage up a hill which gives them the most perfect view. It would be a perfect view if the weather would just cooperate anyway. Evan is trying to get permission to fix up the cottage and finds he has a lot more work to do than they previously thought. We meet an odious man who has the power of the office of planning and uses it to make people jump. He has certainly not made any friends around their village and gets Evan’s goad up every time he has to deal with him. On one particularly frustrating day with this man, Evan gets a call from the police department with a report from a distraught woman reporting her daughter missing. The two of them are staying at a caravan park whilst the daughter recovers from a surgery. The plain clothes division is immediately dispatched and not only is a thorough search done of the area but also all the people staying at the caravan park are interviewed.

What is interesting to Evan is another story that happened over 20 years previously when he was still a child himself of another little girl who went missing. He remembered the story well because he used to play with this kid and her family every time they visited over the summer holidays. All the old memories Evan had filed away were beginning to come back. The family had not returned to visit the area after the little girl went missing and only this year they all had come back for a family birthday party. Evan did not believe this could be a coincidence so went about re-investigating the crime from the past in hopes that it would give him clues about the child who had just disappeared. The family seemed to all blame each other for the missing child and so Evan has to try to dig through not only the atmosphere they created but to find what really happened all those years ago. Can we say dysfunctional – this family has their picture beside the word in the dictionary.

Are these two disappearances connected? This is what Evan is trying to find out and he is up against most of his fellow officers who believe that is way too much of a coincidence and for Evan to just concentrate on the recent mystery. All will be revealed.

Evan's Gate By Rhys Bowen