"Where the missing gather" by Helen Sedgwick

An audio book - book 2 of a series. Reading book 1 first might help this second book feel less cluttered with people and evasive about the past.

Georgie (black policewoman) is with Fergus (who once had a responsible job in a power station - now he does archaelogy and works at supermarket tills). There were deaths in the past - Alexis, Rachel, etc, but details aren't revealed was killed. Erol was Georgie's brother. Georgie thinks it's her fault that Erol was shot.

Shona + Kev are potato picking when Shona finds a bone. Shona is only doing the job because she wants to be a journalist and she's investigating Ricky's farm. Georgie suspects that Ricky Barr runs a drugs ring using hired pickers to distribute. Ricky's son is Andy. Natalie, chair of the community council. has 2 bad sons.

Si is a policeman. He's come out. Alexis left a package for him, told him to trust nobody. Even the police. Si finds a horse, killed ritually. Ketamine's involved. Trish is a policewoman.

Ricky's older sister disappeared when she was 12, an incident which attracted little attention. Ricky say that she was ritually murdered. But she wasn't. Under a different name she's come back.

Fergus has invited a prof to study a local site. There are volunteer diggers.

The bone's a toddler's bone. Betty, a woman in an old people's home, recalls a murder from the 60s in the woods. LSD.

There's distrust of outsiders -

• Ricky's father, a German, arrived in the area and bought a farm. The locals disliked him.
• Fergus, not a local, has an interest in local history
• 2,000 years before, a woman left the village and returned pregnant. After she gave birth the locals blamed her for the bad weather and killed the family - three-fold deaths involving Air, Blood and Water.
• Racism is rife - Geogie thinks the local dislike her because she's black, female and american. She thinks that Fergus is complicit because he doesn't make a fuss. Georgie comes home one day to find Fergus gone. He doesn't think he's done much wrong.

Trish's adoptive father Walt (now senile) performed rituals. Trish fancies the visiting policeman Frazer, not knowing that his wife died the year before.

Dawn's mother is in jail for killing a daughter.

Ricky goes to the police station to say it's his horse that was killed. He gives names of suspects to the police.

Walt escapes from the home and tries to sacrifice himself. He dies. Trish doesn't seem that upset.

Natalie's taken in for questioning. She became interested in the local dig because she wants to find the ritual knife.

The local meet. Fergus attends. Much is revealed. Later we learn about Trish's mother, her step-brother, etc.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• Blue Book Balloon (This atmosphere of menace, of a grinding, persistent hostility built into the fabric of the place, is one of the things that challenges Georgie, alongside the persistent threat that her outpost of a police station will be closed to save costs, and alongside the wall of silence over the crimes she's trying to solve. But she faces problems at home, too. Fergus - perhaps from a desire to see the best in people - continually downplays the hostility)