The Treatment by Mo Hayder

Detective Jack Caffery is called in once the couple is discovered.  A man and his wife, imprisoned in their house for days, beaten and left to die of hunger and dehydration.  Even worse, they have a young son and he is no where to be found.  As the police search for the boy, they find nothing and have to wait until the parents are able to talk.  By the time they find him, he is dead.

Caffery has an incident in his own past that makes working on cases like this even more painful than for the other officers.  His older brother, Ewan, was abducted when he was nine and never found.  The police suspected a neighbor but no proof was found and the man was never arrested.  Jack grew up in the house across the tracks from the probably abductor and killer of his brother.  He will never be able to give up the case until he finds out the truth about what happened that day years ago.

Caffery's pain seems to give him an insight into the kind of mind that could commit such crimes.  That's a good thing as everyone is convinced that this type of killer will strike again.  Caffery finds a related older case that no one else connected until now and it sends him on the trail of what he suspects is the next family to fall under the killer's eye.  Can he discover the identity before it is too late?

This is the second in the Jack Caffery novels.  Readers will be fascinated by the character of Jack and his need to find a way to put to bed the truths that have haunted him his entire life.  Jack's insights and abilities to go the extra mile to discover what has happened makes for a riveting novel.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.