Missing

When a teenage Sri Lankan au pair goes missing, it's up to the Bradford police to find her. When they fail, the objective turns to justice. For DCI James Turnbull, the case is a puzzling contrast to his career in the Murder Squad - this time, he needs to prove that a crime has even been committed.

With no body and no motive, Turnbull and his team closely look at the family who hosted the seventeen-year-old Fathima, among other suspects. As circumstantial evidence piles up, Turnbull looks to convert his investigation into a conviction - but at what cost?

In this novel by James Stewart, the guilty party is the justice system itself. This case will remind everyone involved, from the police to legal representatives, that sometimes we can't account for the human element. The system is not without limits, nor is it infallible. With the outcome resting on a knife's edge, can justice ever truly be served for the missing?

In an almost unprecedented career move, a Senior Yorkshire Judge has turned himself into a prolific novelist. James, who as a QC worked out of the top Leeds Chambers at Park Court, was involved in many high profile criminal cases all over the UK and in the South Pacific. Then, as a Judge, he presided over some of the notorious murder cases that came before the Bradford and Leeds Courts. The experience of these cases lies behind all his novels. The first, The Honour Killing came out in late 2017 (under a pseudonym J S Hamilton), to be followed by Missing, about a vanished au pair girl, and then Slaughter, soon to be followed by Ripper2 (all written under the name James Stewart).