Finding Davey Jonathan Gash Allison and Busby £18.99 hbk Oct 2005 Judith Cutler

Judith Cutler is the author of two popular series featuring Sophie Rivers and Kate Powers. Her first novel, Dying Fall was published in 1995 and she has since gone on to write fourteen more. Her latest, The Food Detective, is published by Allison & Busby. Her website is www.judithcutler.co.uk

Six-year-old Davey Charleston is kidnapped while on holiday with his parents in Florida. The case defeats the US police, and his parents return to England to mourn their son as lost forever. Bray, a highly skilled craftsman who has already begun to pass on his love of wood and of cabinet-making to his adored grandchild, decides he must take every step he can to contact Davey – whom everyone assumes has been brainwashed and absorbed into a rich family.

Bray enlists the help of a Dickensian roll call of characters, including an embittered editor made redundant by a London publisher, a retired American cop and Kylee, who might be both autistic and dyslexic and only fourteen, but has statistical and computing skills that outclass most professionals’. Their aim is to put into action Bray’s bizarre plan to revive Davey’s memories of home, using books and a game based on the figures Bray used to carve on Davey’s instructions.

Each character is finely drawn, especially the repellent but warm-hearted Kylee who loathes the uptight Lottie – who returns the feeling in spades, it has to be said. But the warmth of affection that suffuses the book accommodates little problems like this, smoothes over the agonies of the mother confined to a mental institution so destructive is her grief, and glosses over the sheer improbability of it all – child stealing apart, of course. It goes without saying that Gash’s research into both woodwork and computers is impeccable.

Finding Davey is a gem of a book, a mixture of thriller and fairy-ale, that demands to find its way into your Christmas stocking. Buy it now.