cover image Cry of the Children: A Lambert and Hook Mystery

Cry of the Children: A Lambert and Hook Mystery

J.M. Gregson. Severn, $28.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8286-8

Early in Gregson’s solid 26th Lambert and Hook mystery, Matt, the personable but disingenuous man who has replaced Lucy Gibson’s father in her mother’s affections and bed, takes the seven-year-old girl to a fair near Hereford. An inattentive Matt is dismayed when Lucy disappears from a ride that he was watching her on shortly before. The later discovery of the girl’s strangled corpse in the river Wye makes Matt a leading suspect. Det. Chief Supt. John Lambert and his trusted aide, Det. Sgt. Bert Hook, also investigate a slow-witted, hulking woman who craves a child’s love; a belligerent carny roustabout; a sly elderly pedophile; and Lucy’s dreadfully overwrought father. As Lambert and Hook accumulate evidence and weigh motives, a little boy is snatched off the street, so they find themselves racing to prevent a second murder. Within the framework of a stock British police procedural, Gregson keeps the reader guessing whodunit. (Jan.)