Showing The Vanished Child by Sarah Smith

In 1887 eccentric millionaire William Knight was shot dead in his own New England parlour; his brutalised 10-year-old grandson disappeared the next day and was never seen again. In 1905, European aristocrat and research scientist Reisden is recognised as the lost boy. Reisden is sure that old Charlie Adair is wrong, though it is true that he has no memories of his early life and of the death of his parents in Africa, but is persuaded during an American trip to involve himself with the surviving Knights' affairs, to help them seek closure. He is still mourning his dead wife and finds himself endlessly protective of Perdita, near-blind musician fiancée of the new Knight heir.

She is in love with Harry Boulding, Reisden told himself, and engaged to Harry. I am in love with Tasy, who's dead. No, I was in love with Tasy, who died. He could not define what he felt for Perdita, only admit it. It was as though feeling was an island he had come to after a long voyage.

And suddenly he really does want to know what happened 18 years before and what the truth is; suddenly he has something at stake and it is not the Knight fortune. This first of Sarah Smith's much praised romantic thriller trilogy, The Vanished Child is a thrilling puzzle and a story of passionate emotions caught up in a clash of cultures; Reisden is the voice of a civilised Europe to whom these Americans' sense of propriety is mere barbarism. --Roz Kaveney