The Forgotten Ones by Brian McGilloway

There was so much going on and so many leads going in various directions that it often seemed confusing. However McGilloway does manage to pull every part of the story together successfully towards the end.

I would like to see McGilloway explore Lucy's past a little bit more or rather that of her parents. Perhaps there is more to the story about her mother and the reasons for her abandonment of Lucy.

In this book we see her mother try to connect with Lucy in a more emotional and intimate way. She isn't just the hard-nosed copper, who apparently wants Lucy to fail where she herself has succeeded. She is the woman, who wants to her daughter to acknowledge her as family.

Perhaps it was me, but I thought some of the sentences were phrased in a strange way. I thought it might be a slang or dialect issue, because it sounded like badly translated English now and again. (Not often, just here and there)

McGilloway points the spotlight on the more vulnerable people in our societies. The homeless, the mentally ill, runaways and children in care. The crimes committed against them often go unnoticed, because they fall into holes in the system. Unfortunately there will always be people willing to use, abuse and harm those men, women and children, who fall into those holes.

The Forgotten Ones is a fast-paced police procedural with a compassionate main character.
I received a copy of this book via Edelweiss.