Turnstone Book

Joe Faraday is a Detective Inspector in Portsmouth, England. He is a widower, father to 22-year-old deaf son J.J., and he is a birder. In short, he is an interesting mix, and about a third of the way into this book, I finally got really interested in him and empathetic toward him.

It wasn't that way at first. At the beginning of the book, Hurley's characters left me a bit flat. I found I really didn't care what happened to them. But as I got to know them a bit better, I began to care and I wanted things to come out well for them in the end.

The story starts simply enough with a young girl, 8-year-old Emman, who has lost her dad and seeks the help of the police in finding out what has happened to him. There are red herrings aplenty that initially lead Faraday in the wrong direction in his investigation of the disappearance.

It turns out that the story is not simple at all. In fact it is extremely complicated. The plot takes lots of twists and turns and for the longest time, it is hard to see how it might all come together with some kind of coherence. Oddly though, it finally does. Not all the loose ends are tied up but enough so that the reader is left with a feeling that some kind of rough justice has been done.

This was Hurley's first entry in this Faraday series and I am advised by those who have read further in the series that the books get better as one goes along. It doesn't hurt at all that this detective is a dedicated birder and the bird references in the book are accurate and lend credibility to the tale.