The Shut Eye By Belinda Bauer - book review: Missing-child thriller is streets ahead of the pack

All popular entertainment fields end up chasing their tails, so why should crime fiction be any different? Most of the time, it isn't. A book or an author makes a mark with a new idea, and publishers scramble over themselves to get their authors writing similar books, staying just the right side of plagiarism.

There are, however, some talented writers who are either so quirkily idiosyncratic – or just plain bloody-minded – that their books resolutely resist conforming to whatever the latest modishness is. Foremost among this admirable company is the award-winning Belinda Bauer, who – in the space of half a dozen books – has become one of the most individual of crime writers.

Her first novel was the very distinctive Blacklands, shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger and, a year later, winning the CWA Gold Dagger. Her most recent book was Rubbernecker, which had admirers claiming that this was her best work, and so expectations were high for The Shut Eye.

Anna Buck's son, Daniel, has gone missing, leaving behind only five footprints in cement as a sign that he ever existed. But this memento becomes immensely important to his devastated mother, who polishes the footprints daily as if they were religious relics. The suicidal Anna is a woman clearly hovering near the fringes of insanity, and it is hardly surprising when she turns to a TV psychic, Latham, for clues as to what happened to her son. Readers are inevitably sceptical of this man, but one beacon of hope may be on offer for Anna, if she can but take advantage of it: DCI John Marvel, who despite a cold, withholding personality, is clearly a man who will leave no stone unturned in a search for the truth.

The Shut Eye is very satisfying, even though in terms of inventiveness it is a notch below the impeccable form of Blacklands and Rubbernecker. But having said that, even lesser work from Bauer is streets ahead of most of her rivals. Her secrets are easy to discern: mastery of characterisation that makes most writing in the genre seem undernourished – both the tragic Anna and the curmudgeonly copper Marvel are fully fleshed out three-dimensional figures, the contrast between her gullibility and his cynicism piquant and sharp.

And as so often with Bauer's work, along with the quirkiness mentioned above, a growing sense of malign horror lurks at the edge of the narrative that ensures an intensity of reading experience. By the time of the climax, in which the footprints in the cement acquire a bizarre new significance, readers will find themselves rushing to the final pages.