The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi: A Claudia Valentine Mystery

Shamus Award-winner Day (The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado) delivers the American debut of Claudia Valentine, a gutsy, compassionate PI in Sydney, Australia. Claudia is hired by Rosa Grimaldi to find her 15-year-old daughter, Madalena, who ran away after a fight with her father. Soon, Claudia is knee-deep in the shadowy underground world of teenage runaways and throw-aways. Meanwhile, Claudia's mother tells her, for the first time, that her alcoholic former husband, Claudia's father who abandoned them 30 years earlier, died in 1985. Living above a pub, divorced Claudia is visited by her two teenage children, whose questions about the grandfather they never met prompt Claudia to probe his life and death. As Claudia's investigations unearth secrets in both her father's past and the Grimaldi (and Valentine) present, Sydney is besieged by bushfires. Day's good-natured, flawed heroine is a compelling tour guide, leading readers to spots in and around and under Sydney not likely to be found in regulation tours. (Apr.)