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[The Sleeping and The Dead] by Ann Cleeves
3★
Detective Peter Porteous has been called to Cranwell Lake, where the body of a teenager has been discovered. After trawling through missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive eighteen-year-old reported missing in 1972.
Prison librarian Hannah Morton is about to get the shock of her life. For Michael was her boyfriend, and she was with him the night he disappeared. The news report that his body has been found brings back dreaded and long-buried memories from her past and begins a deadly chain of events. I really like Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series and her Shetland Island books...but her standalones just have always lacked something for me. This was an interesting plot line with a great deal of promise but it seemed to just plod along and never really got off the ground. I found her main character...Peter Porteous...to be a bit of a dud. He was a loner and didn't display much personality and didn't work and play very well with others. It was almost as if he was tired of the whole thing. It's not a cozy mystery but it is very close. If that genre is what you enjoy then you will probably like this one.
