The Dead Ground

Set in Northern Ireland, McGowan’s second contemporary police procedural featuring forensic psychologist Paula Maguire (after The Lost) brilliantly depicts the Ballyterrin cop-shop milieu, with all its rivalries and tensions, and the plight of pregnant Paula, who’s unsure whether Aidan O’Hara, her old Irish flame, or Guy Brooking, her English and married superior on the Missing Persons Response Unit, is her child’s father. Between bouts of morning sickness, Paula and the MPRU face a series of stolen-baby cases that parallel Paula’s personal dilemma and that touch on the volatile sociopolitical issue of abortion rights. McGowan deftly integrates her primary story lines with Paula’s family woes, a popular faith healer’s murky machinations, and the welter of problems besetting a small police team forced to compete with the regular police force, headed by the implacably efficient and impeccably clothed and coiffed Det. Chief Insp. Helen Corry. Readers will be eager to see what happens to Paula next time. (July)