Flesh & Blood — John Harvey

Retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder has fled to the Cornish coast, but he can't escape the past. Susan Blacklock would be thirty now. But fourteen years ago she disappeared, and the case has gone unsolved -- though Elder had his suspects. Now, with one of them out on parole, pretty Emma Harrison has gone missing. Just as Elder's knowledge becomes crucial to the official investigation, he unwittingly becomes vital to the crime's ongoing perpetration. For with cryptic messages on seaside postcards and a few planted clues, the killer is drawing Elder into the very heart of the matter. Elder's teenage daughter is already there. In the first of the Frank Elder mysteries, before Ash & Bone and Darkness & Light, John Harvey sets in motion the events from which Elder's family will never recover.