The Sleeping Season - Kelly Creighton

You get to know a lot about people during a crime investigation, particularly when the crime involves a missing person. When it's a child who has gone missing the police need to know as much about the child as soon as possible, and that's where you find out a lot about the parents as well. It's not just what they tell, there's just as much that can be revealed by what they aren't telling. What exactly that tells you, other than when something doesn't ring true, is what the investigator really needs to find out. In The Sleeping Season, Kelly Creighton's first DI Sloane thriller, matters can potentially be complicated by the location. You would think there's no reason why Belfast should be any different from any other part of the UK, but evidently things are different here, and people can have their reasons for keeping things quiet.

It's true however that even the idea of a child going missing, potentially abducted, is itself something rare in Belfast and Northern Ireland. As Harriet Sloane observes "these things were rife in other places. But in Belfast it was never like this ...Kids did not just disappear here". When someone goes missing in Northern Ireland it has traditionally been related to terrorism, but that seems unlikely in the case of River, a four year old boy who has gone missing from his home in East Belfast. His mother and her partner Raymond aren't exactly acting suspiciously, and Zara's concern does actually seem very real, but something doesn't seem to add up. Little details are missing or not quite fitting with the story and the family relationships. There is also the fact that River is a child with problems and is not easy to manage.

You also just don't learn about missing children and parents in such a crime novel, you inevitably learn much about the investigating officer, and working for the PSNI DI Harriet Sloane is definitely not the typical police officer you find in most crime fiction. Yes, she has relationships problems, but those come as part of the package of being a police officer. Harry's family background and that of her siblings indeed might even already have been affected by the fact that her father was a senior police officer in the RUC during the more difficult years of the Troubles. Harry has also had a brush with crime and death as a young child, and all of this plays a significant factor on the 37 year old woman she has turned out to be. Not to mention that she has come out of an abusive relationship with her husband Jason.

Regardless of the differences in the Belfast setting and the uncommon background that sets DI Sloane apart from most police detective inspectors, there's initially a feeling that the personal and professional parts of Harry's experience in The Sleeping Season don't side by side all that well. The missing child case and gradual revelations of Harry's troubles have are interesting in their own right, but it's hard to see how one feeds into the other. Kelly Creighton however is careful not to set the stall out too soon or too obviously, and if you initially can't really see where this one is going, it's all the more surprising and effective when it all comes together.

The Sleeping Season doesn't push the typical buttons to satisfy in the matter of a typical police thriller. There are no real action drama scenes, no shoot outs or car chases, no outbursts of rage and violence. It's all about the investigation, the gradual probing, trying to understand people and not box them into standard types. Creighton doesn't even play the game of the detective uncovering clues and having intuitive revelations. It's realistic in how events take on their own momentum and the true story comes out. Those dark revelations when they come apply equally to the investigation, but perhaps even more in Harry's situation, the case opens up and tests aspects of DI Sloane's own life that she's not yet ready to deal with.

Rather than some hard investigation, leaning on witnesses and suspects, what really comes out on all sides that perhaps has application to Northern Ireland - as distinct from crime investigation in other US or UK crime fiction - is that there is a willingness to show crime and violence as a consequence of weakness. Harry's failings lead to problems with her colleagues and family, and the weaknesses and flaws in River's family and upbringing also have some bearing on what happens. These failings and weaknesses in others aren't necessarily criminal in and of themselves, but in others can lead to lies, cover-ups, trouble and death. Whatever it is that Creighton has put her finger on here I will be keen to see developed in further DI Sloane books, but whatever it is certainly sets this book apart from a lot of standard police detective thriller material.

Reading notes: The Sleeping Season (DI Sloane 1) by Kelly Creighton is published by Friday Press. Read from Kindle edition.