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A disturbing thriller of missing children in a small English town, masquerading as a quiet tale about political red tape.

Light Shining in the Forest by Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) begins as an eccentric, dreamy tale of an ineffectual pencil-pusher and a family distraught over a missing child whose trail has gone cold. A forester named Geordie works alone on a clear-cut at the English-Scottish border and remembers his missing stepson. A smarmy, self-satisfied career bureaucrat named Norman revels in his latest assignment: in a new pilot program of the British government he is given the title of “Children’s Czar” to the North East region, along with a hefty salary and a fine office and nothing to do. He sits at his fancy desk sipping lattes and waits to receive a mission that never comes.

Geordie’s stepson has been missing for months; but when more children go missing in a sleepy town nearby, an ambitious young journalist wonders if a children’s czar might be just the one to show some concern. Despite Norman’s repeated protest that his job is “strategic, not operational,” he is eventually goaded into action. When the unlikely team of journalist and bureaucrat initiates an investigation into the missing children, Light Shining in the Forest begins to accelerate into a thriller of great suspense and intensity. What started as a story of a surreal forest and quiet distress becomes a terrifying view into the mind of a monster, with religious overtones and paranormal possibilities and a panicked journey into the heart of the forest. Torday delights in creepy details as he turns his created world on its head; readers will be tempted to stay up late to finish reading but will need to keep all the lights on.

This review originally ran in the April 15, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: mystery, Shelf Awareness, thriller |