Lost

Political intrigue in Graham Greene territory snares a young widow on a Mediterranean island in a taut thriller by a deft new literary talent. The plane is late; a small-time hood named Mickey da Cruz is getting edgy. From the outset of this splendidly crafted novel of suspense, suspicion hangs heavily in the air, and page by gripping page, terror insidiously tightens its hold. Just as Carroll & Graf's widely acclaimed literary thriller Lying With the Enemy uncovered the horror at the heart of a Nazi-occupied island in the English Channel, Lucy Wadham in her debut novel bares the corrupt soul of a barren, sun-drenched Mediterranean island rent by ancient enmities. Italian gangsters haunt its alleys, and The Movement - a cadre of idealistic freedom fighters - has declined into a band of racketeers. The people, meanwhile, suffer poverty and political oppression as they long without hope for independence. This island is no paradise. Alice Aron knows this morally desolate place. Now widowed, she returns to her dead husband's home with her two young sons. She does not know the perils that await her there. She does not know that she will be thrust into the center of a deadly conflict between a driven police detective, Antoine Stuart, and the criminally ruthless power-monger Coco Santini. She does not know that within hours her seven-year-old son will vanish into the midday air from the middle of the village square. A child's life hangs in the balance, and a woman's destiny is profoundly altered as the unexpected and unpredictable events unravel in this craftily wrought, tersely told, and thoroughly compelling novel.