Amazon.com description: Product Description: A three-year-old child returns, unable to explain where she'd been or why she'd been away for three days. Shortly after, a convicted pedophile is released into the community. Then the child of a wealthy executive disappears, and not long after, a suspect in the kidnapping is found stabbed to death. Chief Inspector Wexford looks for connections and finds himself focusing on domestic violence. As he moves closer to discovering the truth, he confronts the discomforting lesson that, when it comes to the inner life of families, justice is rarely as straightforward as the letter of the law. In this, the eighteenth Wexford tale, Rendell demonstrates anew why she has been dubbed the "Queen of Crime."

"Rendell's clear, shapely prose casts the mesmerizing spell of the confessional." (The New Yorker)