Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND, SACRED, GONE BABY GONE, PRAYERS FOR RAIN, MYSTIC RIVER, SHUTTER ISLAND and a short story collection, CORONADO. MYSTIC RIVER was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. Before becoming a full-time writer, Mr Lehane worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston area.

Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda Cready. Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation into her abduction, the police have uncovered nothing. And as the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone – vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed. Then a second child disappears. Confronted with a police force seething with lethal secrets, Kenzie and Gennaro soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive.