EVAN BLESSED

Detective Constable Evan Evans has no time for prenuptial jitters. He’s just finished hauling his fiancée Bronwen’s possessions up to their mountain cottage when a young hiker arrives claiming to have misplaced his girlfriend on the slopes of Snowden.

After Paul Upfield had a tiff with his girlfriend, they separated on the mountain, and now she’s missing. Because she’s only 17, the police start an early search. The disappearance takes on sinister implications when the search dogs discover an underground bunker complete with handcuffs hanging from a beam. As the search continues, Evan receives several mysterious missives in the form of sheet music whose notes yield cryptic clues. The police have hundreds of people to interview because the district is flooded with summer tourists. Although there are some local possibilities that partially fit the profile, none of them seems guilty. Meanwhile, Evan is coping with his mother, who remains cool to Bronwen, and her parents, who’ve scrapped the happy couple’s simple plans in favor of a truly grand wedding. When Bronwen vanishes, more clues from the music-loving kidnapper reveal that her disappearance is not a random event. Evan and his colleagues pull out all the stops trying to find the missing girls before it’s too late.

Bowen builds tension with every page simply by making Evan and Bronwen (Evans to Betsy, 2001, etc.) so likable and resourceful that you pull for them all the way.