Red Riding

In 1974, Eddie Dunford comes home from South England and gets a job as a cub reporter for the Yorkshire Post. A schoolgirl has gone missing, and Eddie suspects it's one of several crimes dating back six years; the police think not and blame gypsies. Eddie digs; the police stonewall him then two of them beat him after he visits the widowed mother of one of the girls missing for a few years. When a child's body turns up at a construction site of local building magnate John Dawson, Eddie has another thread to pull. By now, he's begun an affair with Paula, the widowed mother, and he suspects collusion among Dawson, the police, and his newspaper - but what are they covering up?

With a serial killer claiming victim 13 and rumors of corruption in their force, the West Yorkshire cops are told to cooperate with a team from outside - Peter Hunter and two hand-picked associates. Hunter gets little help but plunges ahead, discovering that one of the 13 victims may have a different killer. This part of the investigation leads to late-night calls, another murder, and bureaucratic moves to push Hunter aside: he may be getting close, not to the serial killer but to bad apples in the force. Christmas approaches.

A murky tale. A child goes missing in West Yorkshire, one of several over ten years; the police find a patsy, an acquaintance of Michael, a blood simple man serving a life sentence for another girl's death. Michael's mother asks John Piggott, a burned-out solicitor, to look into her son's conviction; Piggott finds injustices in current and past cases. Maurice Jobson, part of a group of corrupt cops, searches for the missing girl, involves a medium, finds nothing, leans hard on Piggott, and may be tiring of the sham. He's warned off going soft. Is there moral strength anywhere capable of facing down the cabal?