Fishnet

In British author Innes’s gritty, unconventional debut, 20-year-old Rona Leonard vanishes, leaving her infant daughter in the care of her older sister, Fiona. Six years later, Fiona—still a single mother working a dreary job in a failing business in an unnamed Scottish city—attends a hen party in the last place her sister was seen, a touristy Highlands village. There Fiona meets a friend of her sister who forces her to accept that Rona was working as a prostitute when she disappeared. Stunned, Fiona becomes obsessed with the online ads for sex workers, as well as with the women plying their trade near her grim office building as she tries to discover what became of Rona. Fiona’s preconceptions of prostitution and her own dead-end life are shattered as she gets to know women trading sex for cash. Innes tends to take to the soapbox to champion the rights of sex workers, and Fiona’s efforts to get out of her rut at times matter more than her quest to find Rona. Still, this is a captivating mystery with plenty of mainstream appeal. Agent: Charlie Brotherstone, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Oct.)