When Florence Lovelady convicted coffin-maker Larry Grassbrook of a series of child murders 30 years ago, she not only made her career, but she thought the case was closed. However, decades later, events from the past are beginning to repeat themselves. When her own son goes missing, Florence wonders if she had the right man all those years ago and if now, the original murderer has come back for some personal revenge.
Set in a small village in Lancashire, this moody thriller is a slow-building pageturner. More suspenseful and psychological than anything else, Bolton gives us a protagonist who makes her way in an inhospitable place to prove that she is as good at her job as she believes herself to be. There is a deeply foreboding feeling to this story, where the sense of place is quite clear. Bolton also brings the area's history of witches and witchcraft into this story, a place where you wouldn't expect it.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. It's a sophisticated story and I liked Lovelady ---but I found I was sometimes struggling with some of the details, or maybe the pace. I felt like the pace was detail-heavy in a way that made it a bit of a slog until about 3/4 of the way through --- and then I was whipping along. This is probably just a case of "not the right book for me in the moment right now," because other readers' reviews on Goodreads are quite positive.
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