Someone Must Know

'The heart and soul of what it means to be human. Heart-rending but utterly uplifting' PROFESSOR LADY SUE BLACK

'Gripping and compassionate, it digs beneath the surface to expose the agony of those lost and those left behind' VAL MCDERMID

Every two minutes someone is reported missing in the UK. Most return, but some do not. This book is about those who stay missing.

The police are unable to investigate every case fully and so, too often, these people disappear from memory. But the missing always leave behind traces clues as to who they might have been and where they might have gone.

Dave Grimstead, a retired detective inspector, has built Locate International: a remarkable and eclectic team of passionate volunteers oceanographers and genealogists, forensic linguists and vintage clothes experts, students and retirees all united by a desire to restore to the missing their names, faces and humanity. And to do that, they must follow the clues wherever they lead.

In a world where the questions begin with a scrap of wet paper in a pocket, an old dress or a faded photograph, the answers are by turns devastating, poignant and deeply mysterious. Someone Must Know brings readers into the heart of stories that cross decades and international borders, as Locate s investigators snatch leads from the mists of the past in search of answers, closure and the truth.

Through a series of riveting cold cases, from the strikingly tall man washed up at sea with unusual weights tied to his ankles, to the mother who simply left home one day and slipped through the cracks of everyday life, Someone Must Know explores the reality of what it means to search for those who are lost. Above all, it is a compassionate, moving study in how to reconstruct whole lives from fragments of evidence, and to follow the stories of people who are gone but do not deserve to be forgotten.