![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() There’s nothing wild or windswept about Sarah Vaughan’s debut crime novel, Anatomy of a Scandal (Simon & Schuster, £12.99), but its glossy, privileged London setting abounds with human predators. Given the subject matter, Denfeld’s lyrical writing can, on occasion, be discomforting, but the sense of physical and psychological isolation is palpable in this moving exploration of loss, hope and human resilience. Her coping mechanism is to reinvent herself as “the snow girl”, putting herself into a fairytale to deal with the trauma of being wrenched from her family by a predatory stranger she knows only as “B”. The narrative alternates between Naomi’s search and Madison’s experience of being locked in the cave-like cellar of a remote cabin. Single-minded Naomi – herself once a missing child, now with only vague memories to help her solve the mystery of her origins – is determined to find Madison, come what may. ![]() Naomi, the eponymous investigator, is asked to track down eight-year-old Madison Culver, who disappeared three years earlier during a trip to cut down a Christmas tree and is generally assumed to have frozen to death. Set in the snowy mountain forests of Oregon, The Child Finder (W&N, £12.99) is the second novel from bestselling American author Rene Denfeld. ![]()
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