What Remains

Tim Weaver’s sixth thriller featuring missing persons’ investigator David Raker is massive. There are over 500 pages relating the story of his latest case, What Remains. That’s good news for his huge numbers of fans as it gives the reader all the longer to live with Raker while he comes to grips with his self-appointed quest to find out what has happened to his friend Colm Healy.

Healy is an ex London DI. The ex had come about four years earlier when Healy had become obsessed with his then current case – the brutal murder of a mother and her eight-year-old twin daughters. Failure to find their killer finally brought Healy to the point where he had sacrificed his family, his home, his career and his savings in order to continue to pursue the killer to the end. But the end is a long time coming as Healy pleads for Raker’s help – but Raker then hears no more from him.

Raker, with family problems of his own, is at first reluctant but then but then he too becomes consumed by the case that had defeated Healy four years earlier. The trail to the killer is a hard one, with astonishing twists as it progresses, and though at times in the early stages the plot builds up slowly, the author’s good writing keeps the reader glued to the page for the dramatic twists and climax ahead.