Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French

 

A party is being held.  It's for the fiftieth birthday of Alec Salter.  Under protest, his four children are there, Niall already out of college and working, Paul still in college, Ollie who plans to take a gap year before college and Etty who still has a couple of years before college.  There is lots of drinking and dancing but one guest is missing.  Charlotte Salter is nowhere to be seen.

She is still missing the next morning.  Etty goes to the family's best friends, the Ackerleys.  They haven't seen Charlotte but the older son, Morgan, agrees to walk with Etty along the river.  They don't find Charlotte but instead find the body of Morgan's father, Duncan Ackerley.  It appears he has jumped from the bridge, a sucide.

The police look into the cases but make no progress.  Thirty years later, everyone comes back to the village.  Morgan is now a successful television presenter and wants to make a podcast about the cases with his older brother.  He wants to interview the Salter children who are back in the village to clear the house and move their father into supported housing.  The Salters want nothing to do with the podcast.  The disappearance of their mother has ruined their lives and they don't want to revisit it.  Will the cases finally be solved?

Nicci French is a husband and wife writing duo who have been known for years as producing some of the best work in the mystery genre.  A book by Nicci French is an automatic buy and read for me as I love their intricate plotting and apt characterization of the people who inhabit the books.  This one is no different.  As the podcast unfolds, secrets that have been held for decades are unveiled and new deaths occur.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.