Out of the Dark — Natasha Cooper

An eight-year-old boy comes running out of the dark to find barrister Trish Maguire one wet Sunday night. Just before he can reach her, he's knocked over by a skidding car. Fighting to save his life, the rescue team finds Trish's name and address sewn into the boy's clothes. The police are convinced that he must be her son-but Trish knows he can't be. Is he connected with one of her clients? Could he be a blood relation? And who has sent him to Trish?

Recovering from a miscarriage, about to go to court with a career-changing commercial case, and missing her partner, George, who is 5,000 miles away, the last thing Trish wants is responsibility for a lost boy. But there is no one else. Her search for the boy's identity takes her to a brutal inner-city housing project, where she has to confront not only the reality of life for the poor and destitute, but also many of her own fears. News of a particularly brutal murder reaches her, and within hours she learns that her erratic father is the chief suspect. It will take all her resolution and integrity to pick her way through this maze.

The gulfs between rich and poor-and between the heroically honest and those for whom life and the law are always negotiable-rip off the last of Trish's self-protective blinders. There are choices to be made and lives to be saved.

Out of the Dark is a touching and gripping novel that looks unflinchingly at crime's most devastating consequences.