There are two more books about Manon Bradshaw and I am keen to read them. Her perspectives on what was happening were very different from those of the police.Īs well as creating characters who feel real, or perhaps as part of it, Susie Steiner lets those characters interact in surprising ways that go beyond the roles that you might expect of colleagues or suspects or family of the missing. She’s a medical doctor who has let herself fall into the shadow of her very prominent physician husband but who has a strong mind and will of her own. The other main character is Miriam, the mother of the missing post-grad student. He’s interesting in his own right and he provides another view of Manon. We see part of the case from the point of view of Davey, a DC reporting to Manon, who is a much more warm-hearted and hopeful person. I found her interesting and I’d like to know what happens to her next. She hurts people she shouldn’t, falls for people she shouldn’t and ends up making an emotional commitment that she had no plan ever to take on. I liked that, over the course of the novel, we see her change. She’s a Cambridge graduate, with a degree in English, who reads people well and does her job to the best of her ability. She doesn’t seek conflict with her bosses or feel the need to be a hero. She’s not an alcoholic (although she does occasionally get drunk). Manon explains that, in Hebrew, her name means bitter and she is often seen as living up to it. She’s is thirty-nine, single, deeply lonely and struggling with the depressing business of Internet dating. At the start of this novel, Manon is a Detective Sargeant with the Cambridgeshire Police. ‘Missing, Presumed’ is the first of three novels about her.

That the story is told from multiple points of view by people with very different backgrounds, motivations and circumstances enriched the novel for me.Ĭentre-stage is Manon Bradshaw. The plot is interesting but it’s mainly there to provide a framework for looking at the lives of the people touched by the investigation. It’s a longer, more arduous process and there are some surprises along the way. This isn’t one of those ticking-clock police dramas where everything has to be solved in seventy-two hours. As the police work to find her or, at least, find out what happened to her, her personal life comes under scrutiny and her friends and her parents receive unwanted media attention. The fact that her parents are friends of the Home Secretary make her a high profile missing person. The circumstances of her disappearance mean she’s classed as a high-risk missing person. From a plot point of view, ‘Missing, Presumed’ follows an investigation into the sudden disappearance of a Cambridge post-grad student.

Detective manon bradshaw