A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid (1999)

In two separate sessions, Sandra and Andrew discuss this brilliantly executed novel…

In the Peak District village of Scardale, 13-year-old girls don’t just run away. So, when Alison Carter vanished in the winter of 1963, everyone knew it was a murder.

Catherine Heathcote remembers the case well. A child herself when Alison vanished, decades on she still recalls he sense of fear as parents kept their children close, terrified of strangers.

Now a journalist, she persuades Detective-Inspector George Bennett to speak of the hunt for Alison, the tantalising leads and harrowing dead=ends. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to stop the story – plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets and revelations.