Two crimes face the police in a normally quiet sailing town. A woman's body has been discovered, nude, washed up on shore. In the nearby town, a toddler is found wandering, mute and unwilling to say anything. The woman is Kate Summer, the child hers. Kate was raped, strangled then thrown into the water. The killer assumed she was dead but even with broken fingers, she had been alive and tried to swim to shore. Her daughter, Hannah, is almost three and will speak only to women; she screams whenever her father tries to interact with her.
The police have two main suspects. Steven Harding is the man who called in the discovery of the body. He says he was hiking and found two boys who had discovered the body and just called it in and waited with the boys. But the police soon discover that Steven, an actor, had a boat nearby and more suspiciously, had had an affair with Kate. The other suspect is Kate's husband. Kate had been a secretary at the pharmaceutical plant where he worked and she set her cap for him and quickly married him to gain the money and house she had always dreamed of. He has an alibi, attendance at a conference but was he really there?
Minette Walters is a British author whose career is unusual. She started off writing psychological thrillers and mysteries and I thought was one of the best around. Apparently she tired of the mystery genre, took a ten year break and since then has written a series of successful historical novels. The plotting in this mystery is taut, the police procedures spot on. There are side stories of a policeman in love with a local stable owner and smuggling in the coastal town the murder occurred in. This book is recommended for mystery readers.
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