With his promotion, Evan Evans is now a Detective Constable and his future never looked brighter. In September, he is marrying the woman he loves and they are going to live in a fixer-upper cottage in the National Park adjacent to the North Wales town of Llanfair. Before he can work on the sewer system to get them ready for inspection, he is called in on a case of a missing five year old girl whose mother thinks was abducted by the child’s Russian immigrant father.

The case is urgent because the child has had a heart transplant and she needs the anti-rejection medication to survive. A search for the father draws a blank and Evan takes a break to work on the underground sewer lines near his house. When he digs a few feet, he finds the body of a young child who was probably interred two decades ago. This case is personal for Evan because he played with the child when they were youngsters and he’s determined to find out how she got in the hole. In the meantime, the mother of the missing girl has disappeared and Evan believes when he finds her, he will solve that crime.

Each novel in this series keeps getting better because the hero learns from his mistakes and knows how to be part of a team. The romance between him and his fiancée adds a nice touch of spice to this special cozy as the police have to investigate the death of one child and the disappearance of another. Rhys Bowen attractively brings North Wales to life in this police procedural series.

Harriet Klausner