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Summary
Summary
This prizewinning debut from New Zealand novelist Tom Baragwanath is both a nail-biting thrill-ride and a beautifully written, acutely observed portrait of a community.
How far would you go to keep your family safe?
Lorraine Henry is generally content to keep her head down and get on with her work as a records clerk at the Masterton police station. But when children start going missing in her small town, Lo can't help but pay attention. After all, she has Bradley, her young nephew, to worry about, and the cops don't seem to be putting much effort into finding the kids. And then the unthinkable happens: Bradley disappears. Distraught but determined, Lorraine vows to bring him home no matter what. And, together with a detective from Wellington, she embarks on a dangerous mission, one that will illuminate all the good and all the bad in Masterton.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Baragwanath's deliciously tense debut paints an evocative portrait of a New Zealand community at risk. Lorraine Henry's quiet clerk job at the Masterton police station gets complicated when two Maori children from the economically depressed small town are kidnapped in quick succession. A short time later, Lorraine's own great-nephew, Bradley--the son of her half-Maori niece, Sheena--goes missing. Though investigators tap Lorraine for insights into the Maori community, they're put off by her sense of urgency. So, she sets out to find the kids on her own, utilizing her law enforcement ties and familiarity with Maori language to track them down. Baragwanath powerfully highlights the racist treatment of New Zealand's Indigenous people without sacrificing pace or intrigue, and the complicated bonds between Lorraine and the rest of her family add weight and dimension to the narrative. In weaving together a lived-in portrait of small-town New Zealand with a truly crackling mystery, Baragwanath proves himself a writer to watch. Agent: David Forrer, InkWell Management. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
When children begin to go missing in a small New Zealand town, the file clerk at the police station turns investigator. Set in the provincial town of Masterton, Baragwanath's debut is both social novel and thriller, spinning the tensions between the white and Māori populations, the chokehold of street gangs, and the toll of drug addiction on young families into a suspenseful crime drama. As the novel opens, a child named Precious Kīngi has been missing for three weeks, and Lorraine Henry, a policeman's widow who works in the file room at the station, is concerned that almost nothing is being done to find her or to protect the town's other children. Lorraine's life revolves around her job, drinking gin with her neighbor Patty (people wrongly suspect that they're lovers), and helping out her adult, part-Māori niece, Sheena, whom she raised after her sister and brother-in-law were killed when returning from a seasonal job shearing sheep. Now Sheena has a 7-year-old son named Bradley, and on a night so rainy there are eels in the gutters, Lorraine heads over to their house. She's greeted at the door by Bradley's mostly absentee father, Keith, a drug dealer and gang member, and she immediately smells "the musty waft" and scorched lightbulbs of cooking drugs. Sheena shrugs off Lorraine's worries but they're well-founded. Sheena is on drugs, Keith is staying with her, and in the next few days, two more children will disappear. And one of them is Bradley. When an out-of-town investigator arrives to ramp up the search, he quickly recognizes Lorraine as the most likely person to offer any help. Resist the urge to race to the climax and keep Google close at hand to look up Māori words, because fully understanding the relationship between Masterton's white and Indigenous cultures is central--not just to appreciating the book but to solving the mystery. Just the kind of dark, disturbing, gritty, and unusual treat thriller lovers are looking for. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This gritty debut novel is part thriller and part compelling analysis of the social tensions in a small New Zealand town. In Masterton, Maori and white citizens coexist uneasily, and illegal drugs, distributed by rival gangs, form the basis of much of the economy. Narrator Lorraine works in the records department in the basement of the local police station and spends her evenings chatting and having a drink or two with her next-door neighbor, Patty. Lorraine is white but well connected to the Maori community; her deceased husband was Maori, as is her niece, Sheena, the mother of Lorraine's beloved grandnephew, Bradley. When Bradley disappears along with two other kids from their neighborhood, Lorraine is recruited by a detective from out of town to help investigate. New Zealander Baragwanath, who grew up in Masterton, brings the town and surrounding countryside to vivid life as he simultaneously and steadily ratchets up the suspense, with Lorraine and the missing children placed in excruciating peril. His keen understanding of the impacts of class and race on the actions of his characters and his compassionate attitude towards their weaknesses give the novel a remarkable depth.