"A terrible series of gales drives through the village of Byland near England's eastern coast. Eventually the storms pass, but they leave behind destruction and fear. An old couple Gladys and Zygmunt Crackjaw, have disappeared. Gladys hasn't been seen in the village in a long time, but the elderly Ziggy bicycled into town every week to buy food and pick up their pensions. The sub-postmistress, Janet Thacker, saw him on Thursday, but no one's seen him since. Now the door to the Crackjaw's house is locked, the pension receipt booklets are on the mantle, and there are some gray hairs and a smear of blood near the fireplace, whee one of the old people may have fallen. The Crackjaws are nowhere to be found.

"With no bodies and no clue to where the Crackjaws might be, Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill and Sergeant Hilary Lloyd face a virtually unsolvable case. Neither the villagers nor the couple's grown children will admit to knowing anything. And nobody seems to care very much. Quantrill and Lloyd will keep probing until they find some answers -- if only Quantrill and Lloyd can tell fact from fiction.

"In this superbly crafted, heartfelt novel, Radley uses a dual narrative technique to transcend the boundaries of the traditional crime novel, producing a story of poignant, universal appeal."
~~front & back flaps

An excellent plot -- a story within a story that still leaves the reader guessing until the last pages. Beautifully crafted and excellently written, as always. It's a shame Ms. Radley wasn't as prolific as Agatha Christie! ( )

This book is about the disappearance and possible death of an elderly couple. Or at least that is what the dust jacket says. For the most part the book doesn't even cover the actual crime or lack there of. The book mainly covers the life of a woman named Janet Thacker. I was disappointed and felt the book was misrepresented as a mystery. The story told wasn't that bad, but it was certainly not what I expected. I gave it two and half stars for the story, but I think it should be re-categorized as just fiction. ( )