A Place of Execution

George Bennett has been haunted for decades by an unsolved mystery—the disappearance of a teenage girl in his small English town in the 1960s. For Bennett, who was a young detective at the time she went missing, the case is both chilling and baffling, providing no leads and no conclusions. Decades later, the unresolved mystery comes to surface again after Catherine, a journalist, interviews Bennett about his investigation of the case for a book she’s writing. He complies—until a new development leads him to stop working with her abruptly, and causes Catherine to begin an investigation of her own. Val McDermid’s 1999 novel, which was nominated for a 2001 Edgar Award, grapples with issues of memory and personal responsibility, for a tale that’s both thrilling and evocative. —Cady Lang

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