The Baby-Snatcher

An Inspector Ramsay Novel

Before Shetland and Vera, Ann Cleeves wrote the Inspector Ramsay series featuring a talented, brilliant detective—now available for the first time in the US.

Marilyn Howe and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo, until one night Kathleen doesn’t come home . . .

Fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting strange.

Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs. Howe has disappeared once more. And for the second time he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland . . . when a woman’s body washes up on the beach.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.

Like the characters and story.

I'm frustrated because Audible said they were going to publish the whole Ramsay series and they are not doing so, at least not so far.

What a dim view of UK police.

All the characters other than Ramsey are angry and foul. No team players. What a sad depiction of a group that Cleeves has made a living off of. Does she ever portray people of faith honorably? Definitely not someone I would want to know. Her success does not impress from the first to the last. Sad.

It was too predictable

The narrator was excellent. The place and descriptions of people added to the general gloomy mood.