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It starts out as a relatively ordinary case. Amira Jamal has requested an inquest be performed by the coroner's office. Her son, Nazim, and one of his school colleagues disappeared seven years earlier. The official line has always been that the two young men left the UK to participate in terrorist activity in Pakistan. However, Mrs. Jamal is not satisfied with that conclusion. She believes that her son is dead. By UK law, she has the right to request that a coroner undertake a review of the case. The coroner has complete authority to do so and to summon witnesses and interrogate them under oath in a courtroom. Jenny Cooper is the coroner who has been assigned to the investigation. The situation rapidly becomes more than a simple search for what happened to the two young men. Jenny's investigator, Alison, is only a reluctant assistant; she has personal ties to the original police investigator and doesn't believe that Jenny is going in the right direction. Then there's an unwanted helper, Alex McEvoy, a disbarred solicitor who was earlier hired by Mrs. Jamal to look into the situation and learned many disturbing facts that no one else seems to want to face. It's hard for Jenny to know how much to trust him or how much she believes the things that he reveals. There are many threads to the narrative, which Hall skillfully weaves together into a compelling plot which goes far beyond investigating a disappearance. However, there was one puzzling subplot having to do with radiation that I found a bit odd. One of the most fascinating elements of the book to me was the detailed look at the coroner's job in the English justice system, which is vastly different from that position in the US. The coroner's duty is to get to the truth in an impartial manner rather than merely dealing with determining cause of death. Hall also does a masterful job in developing the character of Jenny Cooper. Jenny is a flawed individual who has to summon all her resources in order to do her job. First of all, she is subject to debilitating panic attacks, which she mostly keeps under control by taking prescription medication. She's aware that she is addicted to the meds; but when she tries to break the cycle, her anxiety disorder makes her almost totally ineffectual. At the same time, she is dealing with trying to raise a teenaged son with whom she has a difficult relationship, leading to much guilt on her part. THE DISAPPEARED was a unique book, both because of the weaknesses of the protagonist and the focus on the role of the UK coroner. I found the plot to be engrossing, but was disappointed in the shocker revelation with which the book concluded, which seemed utterly out of place to me. Despite that, I plan to search out the first book in this series, THE CORONER, which has not yet been released in the States.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, January 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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