Some families are haunted by tragedy. For the Gordonstones, it all began with the supposed accidental drowning of six-year-old daughter Melanie, followed by her mother’s suicide a decade later. Now the girl’s restaurateur father has been murdered. For the ironically named David Bliss, this murder investigation will be the definitive case of his career. This is the third in the Inspector Bliss mystery series by James Hawkins, a former police commander and senior lecturer of criminal law.

Coerced back from a year-long leave of absence to investigate the homicide, Bliss must face the repercussions of the mistakes he made as an inexperienced young officer when he failed to interview Melanie’s sister Margaret, the key witness to the drowning. Now, frustrated at every turn by his senior commander, Bliss resigns from the police force and undertakes his own unofficial investigation by tracking down the adult Margaret, now living as a recluse on an island in Northern Ontario. The novel explores the nature of betrayal by those who both act and fail to act.

The narrative voice shows a strong cinematic influence, making the novel read at times like a film treatment and blunting much of the emotional resonance between the characters. There is an overreliance on internal monologue and a tendency to jump-cut past the moments of greatest dramatic tension. The timelines are also occasionally confusing, as Hawkins’ crosscuts between locales as well as the primary and secondary characters. The resolution is both anticlimactic and unsatisfying, and the events leading up to this denouement in the Canadian wilderness will try the reader’s suspension of disbelief.