Review: "Missing," E.A. Jackson

By Liz Soares

It’s a hot summer in London in 1990 when Baby Bella goes missing. Detective Inspector Martha Allen has misgivings about taking the case. She’s never handled anything like it. Allen could reveal she’s pregnant as an excuse; then again, she’s ambitious. So she strides headfirst into a case that will ultimately haunt her for nearly 30 years.

Thomas and Vivien Carpenter have come to the city for a getaway from their home in Wells, in the southwest of England. They’re staying at the Bellevue Hotel in Pimlico. Their daughter, Bella, slumbered in a Moses basket by an open window, while her parents slept in bed. Thomas awoke in the early hours of the day to find the baby gone.

Officers are called in from across the city; this is a big case. Allen enlists the help of Detective Constable Manley Desbury. She doesn’t know him, but they develop a solid working relationship.

Promising leads are followed but turn out to be dead ends. A scrap of fabric, a smear of blood are all the detectives have as clues. No one has seen anything. Allen is desperate. She wants to find the baby, of course, but she also envisions her career going down the tubes if the case is not solved.

Then, a beautiful young woman shows up with Baby Bella. Nell Beatty says she found the tot on a park bench. Allen starts to question her, but she disappears. She’d given the police false information, and they are unable to find her again.

Allen wants to keep the case open; she doesn’t think the whole story has been told. But when even Desbury lets her know he thinks she’s pushing too hard, she backs off.

Then, in 2020, just before the pandemic causes shutdowns and a massive disruption to everyday life, DI Desbury calls Allen, now in admin at Scotland Yard. A body has been found on his turf in Bristol. It’s Nell Beatty.

Allen can’t help herself. The wound of what to her was an unfinished case is reopened. She has to find out what really happened to Baby Bella.

Desbury is willing to help her, to a degree. He also needs to find Nell Beatty’s murderer. The trail is thin, and Allen has to remind herself “this is why they call us the plod.” Eventually, Allen does learn enough to close the case in her own mind, and to move on with her life.

For the reader, though, there’s one final twist.

This was a deeply satisfying, page-turning read, as much about the cost of not solving a crime as it is about solving it.

I knew from the first page I was going to enjoy it. Allen is a likable, relatable character and her tenacity is admirable. The suspense is intense; kernels of of the truth emerge, but it is truly not until the final page that all is revealed.

I enjoy police procedurals in general, but Missing is something more. The detective work is there, but this is also Allen’s story. And, of course, Baby Bella’s.