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When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods one day with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan – the child who came back – is a detective in the Dublin police force. He’s changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl’s body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan – the child who came back – is a detective in the Dublin police force. He’s changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl’s body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
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Reviews
Wonderful, believable heroes and villains, a fantastic, driving plot that defies convention and keeps you guessing, and a stunning, shattering climax that will haunt you for weeks. But it also resonates with a deep, profound sadness, a longing for the simplicity of childhood, and the answers you can find in other people to the questions in your own life. It's brilliant.
'This book is BRILLIANT. In a genre as heavily structured and populated as crime, it's pretty rare to find a book that leaves you mourning the victim and the cause, instead of just briefly acknowledging the corpse as a kind of grisly prop for the plot. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant: READ IT.'