Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?: A Novel

Charlotte Salter fails to appear at her husband’s fiftieth birthday party. The family becomes increasingly concerned as days go by with no sign of the missing woman. When her coat is found by the river, they fear for the worst. The suspicious death of neighbor Duncan Ackerley adds a new layer of mystery. Is there a connection? The story unfolds in three parts. The first lays bare the impact of these events on the Salter children and the two Ackerley boys. The failure of the inept police investigation compounds their distress. The second jumps forward thirty years. The Salter and Ackerley offspring, now middle-aged, are all back in their East Anglican village of Glensted, the former to move Charlotte’s husband to a retirement home, the latter to revisit their father’s death. In the third, a new detective, called in to investigate a recent crime in the area, reopens the two cold cases. The steadily paced tale paints a complex picture of raw feelings, odious suspicions, and imperfect alibis, and leads slowly but surely to a clever, if slightly implausible, solution. All told, Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? has enough suspense and mystery to appeal to all Nicci French fans.