Last Day Alive

On a hot summer evening, ten-year-old Piper Chase rides her pink bicycle toward the woods on Black Heart Lane. She is on her way to a sleepover at her best friend Miley's house, a trip she has made a hundred times. She never arrives.

Detective Kimberley King takes the case knowing how much weight the first twenty-four hours carry in a missing child investigation. There are no witnesses and night is coming on. Piper's grandparents are shaking with grief and blaming themselves. Kimberley's team finds Piper's body in a woodland clearing, lying on a bed of moss.

Then a second call comes in: Miley has vanished too. Kimberley works every lead she has. One is the summer camp counsellor whom both girls hero-worshipped. Another is Piper's uncle, a gloomy man who came back to town the day she disappeared.

This is a police procedural and a crime thriller told from the detective's point of view. It runs on a ticking clock, with a second night falling and a frightened child somewhere out there. The subject matter is dark, since the victims are young girls, and the pace is tight, with suspects narrowing as the hours go.