In the Midnight Hour - Softcover

Michelle Spring

3.56

63 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752844865 ISBN 13: 9780752844862

Publisher: Orion Paperbacks, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Liam is every inch a teenager, busking quietly on a street in Cambridge, when a wealthy woman befriends him, daring to hope that he is the son who vanished off a Norfolk beach twelve years ago. Laura Principal is brought in to settle the question of identity. Is this beautiful youth really the lost child, or is he an interloper? As Laura searches for the truth in this chilling story of identity, devotion and death, she finds herself face to face with a loss that threatens to turn her own world upside down ...

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

In this heavily atmospheric thriller by talented writer Michelle Spring, the disappearance of the 4-year-old son of polar explorer Jack Cable is still unsolved after more than a decade. Then a teenage street musician attracts the attention of Cable's wife, Olivia. Certain that the boy is their son, the Cables enlist the services of private investigator Laura Principal. Laura's brief is to discover whether Liam is really the son whose memory is still very much alive within his family, and while her efforts to authenticate Olivia's hunch are not particularly engrossing, her concern for the Cables is deep and heartfelt enough to involve the reader in her quest.

Higher praise belongs to Spring for her gifts of description. Here she shows off her well-honed talent for narrative, character development, and skill in recreating the brooding melancholy of England in midwinter. Fans of Frances Fyfield and Barbara Vine will appreciate Spring's intelligence, craft, and psychological acuity, all on view in this compulsively readable new novel. --Jane Adams

From the Inside Flap:

ing's acclaimed novels of psychological are invariable winners in the white-knuckle sweepstakes. Richly-drawn characters with unsavory motives. Secret sins of the past that snake their way into the unsuspecting present. Atmosphere a reader can step into and feel. Michelle Spring is a master at weaving grand themes into compelling plots. Now, in her astonishing new novel, she ices our veins with a North Sea chill.

Twelve years ago, four-year-old Timmy Cable vanished suddenly from a wild and lonely stretch of East Anglian beach. After a massive police search fails to find a body, the boy is presumed dead.

Now, on a quiet street in Cambridge, Timmy's mother, still wracked with grief, is drawn to a teenage street musician―and feels desperately certain that this tall, blond boy must be her son. Has the long nightmare of loss ended at last? If so, where has Timmy been all these years? And why, whenever the boy is questioned about his past, does he become strangely hostile?&l

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.