The Playroom

John Connor

On her thirteenth birthday the daughter of a Bradford judge is kidnapped in West Yorkshire, sparking Operation Shade - a massive fifty-strong detective investigation working against the clock to try to locate and save her. Knowing the chances of Sophie Kenyon surviving will diminish dramatically after the first twenty-four hours, Detective Chief Superintendent John Munro begins to crack under the pressure of holding together an enquiry swamped with leads.

Meanwhile, left off the Shade investigation because of her past encounters with Munro, DC Karen Sharpe is pursuing her own single-handed enquiry into historic child abuse allegations. Twenty-three-year-old Pamela Mathews says a local MP raped her ten years before. The task of finding corroboration looks hopeless, but Sharpe keeps at it. Anything rather than face up to her own tangled personal life. She lives with a lawyer she doesn't love and is trying to care for a child who thinks she is her aunt. The truth is more complex and frightening, leading back to still unresolved events from a year before.

Karen's enquiry uncovers connections with the present day disappearance of Sophie Kenyon. As the true nature and extent of the conspiracy is uncovered, Karen realises that there are powerful interests at work - men who have plotted for ten years to conceal the truth. Her investigation becomes a race to find clues that will save Sophie's life. But violence interrupts. Events spiral out of control and drag her towards a terrifying confrontation with a man who will stop at nothing to keep the past hidden. In an explosion of violence and bloodshed, she is left fighting not just to locate Sophie Kenyon, but to save herself.