Book description
'..the best estimate we have shows that every five minutes a child
goes missing in the UK'
Norman Stokoe has spent his life climbing the greasy pole. A career
civil servant, he knows his way around. He can quote the numbers. He can
provide the references. So when the new government decides to appoint
regional 'Children's Czars', Norman is an obvious candidate. He settles
down in his new leather chair behind his new desk overlooking the River
Tyne and waits for the green light to begin his mission. The green light
never comes.
What does happen is that two children go missing. Norman has built a
career being 'strategic rather than operation' but now, faced with a
campaigning journalist and a distraught mother, he is forced to become
involved. Meanwhile Geordie Nixon, working deep in the wilderness of
Kielder forest is seeing strange things. Are they for real or is he
losing his mind? And what place is there in this brave new world for the
miraculous? A well-crafted novel...there is momentum, and there is
excitement. Paul Torday burst on to the literary scene in 2006 with
his first novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
, an immediate international bestseller which has been translated into
28 languages and has been made into a film starring Ewan McGregor,
Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Blunt. His subsequent novels, The
Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce
, The Girl on the Landing
, The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers
, More Than You Can Say
and The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall
were all published to great critical acclaim. He is married with two
sons by a previous marriage, has two stepsons, and lives close to the
River North Tyne.
