When twenty year old Mary fails to come home one night, her mother Margaret knows something is wrong. Her persistent pleas to the police fall on deaf ears, until a mutilated body is discovered a week later. But the reader is already aware that Mary is dead, has heard her murderer tell her as he shaves her head that he is going to give her mother "a little puzzle to solve, to do with the word "why". Why I do what I do and why do I do it to you?" Understanding why becomes the issue at stake as Margaret is forced to confront the man who has so viciously overturned her life. This debut novel depends on standard character and plot devices--a detective with a dying marriage, an alcohol problem and a growing affection for Margaret; and a conventional use of flashbacks to the past as a way of highlighting the emptiness of the present. Despite this, it is an unusually well-written thriller. Bringing the killer to justice is gradually eclipsed by the story of how Margaret deals with the brutal death of her only child, and the issues from her past she is forced to confront. If the prose seems a little forced at times (Parson"s obsession with subtle detail sometimes fails to ring true), there is still plenty here for those who like their thrillers to be more than the just the good guys versus the bad. --Claire Allfree