The Calling

June 13, 2011
In Bruce's so-so third contemporary procedural featuring Cambridge Det. Constable Gary Goodhew (after 2010's The Siren), Goodhew looks into a missing persons case. Kaye Whiting vanished while shopping for a present for her mother's 80th birthday. An early chapter reveals a suffering Whiting, bound and gagged on the shore of a lake, after she accepted a ride from the wrong familiar face. The following day, a fellow police officer, Sue Gully, fields an anonymous call from someone who ominously states that when the police find Whiting, they'll realize that she was still alive at the time of this call. The informant goes on to accuse insurance company employee Peter Walsh of being responsible for the disappearance, and states that arresting him will stop "the killings." Some overheated prose ("But it was then that a cold, hard sabre of guilt unsheathed itself and sliced its steel blade into her conscience") doesn't enhance the overly familiar plot.