Dear Little Corpses

Two buses packed with children evacuated from 1939 London arrive at the Suffolk village of Polstead. At their departure point, a man is found murdered in a stairwell. At their destination, chaos reigns. More children had been sent than expected, obliging Josephine Tey, a writer, to house a young boy. At the annual village fete held a few days later, a four-year-old girl disappears. Lost? Or abducted? Suspects, each with a secret buried in their history, abound a teacher who accompanied the evacuees; three reclusive siblings living nearby; one of the bus drivers, an unpleasant local woman, and her elderly brother. The solution to the murder emerges gradually and rather transparently, while the search for the missing girl, now feared dead, becomes a more complex investigation involving ugly deeds from the past. Happenstance, village gossip, and a keen eye all play their part in Josephine’s effort to find out what lies behind the child’s disappearance. The leave-you-gasping twists towards the end of the story make Dear Little Corpses a compelling mystery, but the strength of the novel lies in its heartrending depiction of anguished parents missing their children because of the evacuation, or perhaps, something more sinister.