Cry Baby by Mark Billingham

 

Two boys are best of friends and love getting together to play.  One is from a wealthy household and goes to a private school, one lives in the projects and goes to a public school.  But both are without their fathers.  The one from money has parents who divorced while the other boy has a father who is in prison.  The mothers, surprisingly, are very good friends and meet regularly at a playground to let the boys play together.  

On this day, while one mother goes to the restroom, the other takes her eyes off the boys while she smokes a cigarette.  The boys run into the woods behind the playground but only one of them returns.  The other boy has disappeared and later witnesses report him being led to a car by a man.

The police are called and DS Tom Thorne heads up the investigation.  Thorne is distracted by his personal life.  His wife has just left him and is pushing him to get the house on the market.  Thorne is a great detective sergeant but doesn't get along with his boss.  He has pulled together a team of men and women who work together well and they all push to find the boy.  Can they save him?

The Tom Thorne series is one of the top rated mystery/police procedural series in the genre.  I've been working on reading them.  While this one is the seventeenth in the series, it is really a prequel in which Tom Thorne is introduced to the reader.  He is a sergeant not a DCI.  He is just recently separated and dealing with the emotions of a upcoming divorce.  He meets his best friend, the coroner who he shares love of football with but he doesn't know the most relevant things about him yet.  The mystery is chilling as always and Thorne is portrayed with the care he always feels for victims while refusing to follow protocol if he has a hunch to follow.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.