Wednesday's child

It was a crime of staggering inhumanity: a seven-year-old girl taken from her working class Yorkshire home by an attractive young couple posing as social workers. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks feels certain little Gemma Scupham is dead, yet the motive for her kidnapping remains a mystery. No ransom is ever demanded, nor could Gemma's tortured, guilt-ridden mother afford to pay one. And when the body of a young man is discovered in an abandoned mine, slain in a particularly brutal fashion, a disturbing, perplexing case takes an even more sinister twist -- drawing Banks into the sordid depths of an evil more terrible and terrifying than anything the seasoned investigator has ever encountered.