Short Synopsis
In this chilling masterwork, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks holds little hope for a seven-year-old kidnapping victim, particularly when no ransom demand is made. When the body of a young man is discovered in an abandoned mine, the kidnapping case takes an even more sinister twist.

Full Synopsis
Wednesday's child is full of woe...

It was a crime of staggering inhumanity: a seven-year-old girl taken from her home right in front of her desperate working-class mother. With each passing moment, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks realizes that the child's death becomes more and more likely. But there are worse fates than death in a nightmare world of human monsters and their twisted games. And the grisly discovery of a young man slain in a particularly savage fashion only starts the clock ticking faster, drawing Banks into the sordid depths of an evil more terrible and terrifying than anything he has ever encountered.

"A gripping thriller." ---San Diego Union-Tribune

"Provocative, mesmerizing, and memorable, this chilling story is a must for mystery collections of every size." ---Booklist

"An unsurprising but thoroughly accomplished British procedural that puts its lowlife denizens through their paces with all the withering mastery of a lion tamer." ---Kirkus