THE BOY THAT NEVER WAS

This is a detailed and most intimate tale of lives after families have lost a small child: the ravages of guilt and recrimination, of desperate hope and hopes shattered.

Barry and Robin paint and live in Tangier with their adored three-year-old Dillon. Harry, baby-sitting one evening, pops out for a moment - and an earthquake strikes. He rushes back to find his house a pile of rubble. Dillon's body is never found.

The guilt is instantaneous and overwhelming, the madness insidious. For Harry there is alcoholism, mental breakdown and a belief that, by a miracle, Dillon survived. Robin is obdurate; her son is dead and Harry close to delirium. And despite her holding him responsible she has her own secret guilt that forces her to hold the marriage together: her private form of atonement.

Five years after they left Tangier for Ireland Harry is convinced he sights Dillon in a crowded Dublin street. Tracking the boy down is a lengthy process involving friends of friends, CCTV, checking vehicle number plates, and the reappearance of Garrick, a suave American from the golden days in Tangier. Garrick is the last in a string of concerned sceptics headed by Robin, who see in Harry a man driven over the edge by grief. Then he steals a pistol and that heralds the countdown to resolution.

This is a novel with sins rather than crime: the inside story of lost children, threatened marriages and violent death. The cover is nothing more than an empty swing. Heart-rending, like the book.