My rreview is written with thanks to Simon & Schuster for my copy of Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

Blurb:

She’s loved by all who meet her. But someone wants her gone . . .

Then

When beautiful and vivacious Charlotte Salter fails to turn up to her husband Alec’s 50th birthday party, her kids are worried, but Alec is not. As the days pass and there’s still no word from Charlie, her daughter, Etty, and her sons, Niall, Paul and Ollie, all struggle to come to terms with her disappearance.
How can anyone just vanish without a trace?
Left with no answers and in limbo, the Salter children try and go on with their lives, all the while thinking that their mother’s killer is potentially very close to home.

Now

After years away, Etty returns home to the small East Anglian village where she grew up to help move her father into a care home. Now in his eighties, Alec has dementia and often mistakes his daughter for her mother. 
Etty is a changed woman from the trouble-free girl she was when Charlie was still around – all the Salter children have spent decades running and hiding from their mother’s disappearance.
But when their childhood friends, Greg and Morgen Ackerley, decide to do a podcast about Charlotte’s disappearance, it seems like the town’s buried secrets – and the Salters’ – might finally come to light.

After all this time, will they finally find out what really happened to Charlotte Salter?

Review:

I read Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? as part of a reading group and there is definitely lots to discuss. From the beginning, the novel is full of mystery and the authors raise lots of questions that I really wanted to get to the bottom of, as I read this book in less than 24 hours. It’s very difficult to let this story go once you start reading!.

The premise of a missing person is not new but I love that Nicci French have found a different angle on this familiar plot. The novel has three parts: the first part is set in 1990, the second part is set in 2022 and the third part remains in 2022, but takes the form of a police procedural novel. This allows the reader to look at the novel from a number of perspectives and try and work out what happened . It also gives us more insight into the characters who are most closely affected by Charlotte Salter’s disappearance and how it has impacted them over time. This technique was most effective with Etty, and I was able to sympathise with her throughout the novel, making me more keen to discover the resolution. I was disappointed we didn’t get to spend more time with Maud – she’s a great character and detective.

Nicci French are no strangers to the crime novel and this really shows in Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? The writing is slick and the plotting is brilliant, as they plant seeds to help us work it out, while surprising us at the same time. 

I do have a few Nicci French books on my TBR – I think it might be time to shuffle them up the list!

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter ? is available from Amazon.