The Lost Sister

In McLean's solid follow-up to The Good Son (2009), Scottish PI J. McNee, an ex-copper with copious professional and personal baggage, agrees to help a reporter friend who's covering the disappearance of 14-year-old Mary Furst. When McNee discovers that Mary's godfather is David Burns, a well-known Dundee criminal whom he'd tangled with in Son, he decides to back off the case, much to the surprise of his longtime friend and police confidante, Det. Constable Susan Bright. Yet something about Mary touches McNee, and when Wickes, a Glaswegian PI, contacts him with a possible lead, McNee is back on the case. With alliances shifting constantly, McNee must decide whom to trust: a fellow PI with a hair-trigger temper and an obvious emotional attachment to the case, or the police, in particular Bright. While McLean's sophomore effort is more nuanced than its predecessor, McNee still needs something extra to set him apart from the brooding PI pack. (Mar.)