THE QUIET PEOPLE by Paul Cleave

 This was the perfect pick up/put down summer holiday read. Very well plotted, numerous and unexpected twists, not so overly detailed that you had to refer back to remind yourself what had been going on, which is why it is that perfect holiday read. You can be immersed in the plot and the characters immediately, but if you are called away for a swim, or a gin, or a chat, or a diversion, it is very easy to pick up again. 

NZ crime writer author Paul Cleave is more famous out of NZ than in NZ. He has published a number of novels in the crime/thriller genre, has won and been short listed for numerous crime publishing awards around the world. Translated into 18 languages! All his novels are set in Christchurch, his home town, but I didn't feel that the NZ setting gave this story - the first one I have read - any particular NZ flavour. A universal urban setting, with characters that could also be anywhere in the world.

Cameron and Lisa Murdoch are successful crime writers, well known and feted around the world. They are old hands on the book/writing/reading festival circuit, well used to questions and interviews on how they work together, how they come up with their murderous plots, and the subsequent solving of them. They also have a son, seven year old Zach, who is not the easiest child in the world to deal with. One Sunday, Cameron takes Zach to a fair at the local park. As any parent with a young child will attest, sometimes a happy fun outing just goes completely pear shaped, for no apparent reason, it just does. Zach, being the tricky child he is, attracts all the wrong attention, as does his dad, resulting in Cameron forcibly taking Zach home. That night Zach threatens to run away from home, and the next morning when Cameron goes to wake him up, he is not in his bed, his room is empty, the window is open. 

The nightmare of a missing child begins. The story switches back and forth between Cameron as the main narrator in the first person, and the police investigator DI Rebecca Kent, narrated in the third person. Of course, the parents are the main suspects, even more so when the parents are crime writers, who in the past have proudly and publicly said they would know exactly how to create the perfect murder and make someone disappear. Not a good start for Cameron and Lisa.

The media circus is crazy, and all the nut jobs in any community pour out of their computer rooms with their placards, on line commenting, protests, and mass movements of guilty, guilty, guilty. It is quite frightening how much power the mob mentality has, and how little it takes for things to get out of control. As they do for Cam, Lisa, and DI Kent.

Plenty of suspense, and easy too for the reader to see themselves in the place of the Murdochs - we will all have had frightening thoughts and maybe real events where our child simply disappears. Not a good scenario at all. Terrific story, I really liked it, and for much of the plot the reader really does not know whether Cameron and/or his wife, or a paedophile on the loose, someone at the fair, or someone else entirely is responsible for the disappearance of the child.

Time to hunt out some other Paul Cleaves!