A missing child. A shattered detective. And a lie so convincing it becomes deadly.
When a seven-year-old boy vanishes after school, Detective Frank Collins finally gets the kind of case that could make his career. He’s ambitious, impatient, and desperate to prove himself. But the disappearance is only the first crack in something far darker.As Collins digs deeper, it becomes clear the missing boy is being used as leverage. Someone is exploiting a grieving mother, manipulating her pain for profit. And Collins himself is being nudged, prodded, and quietly set up for a fall.
What begins as a routine missing-person case mutates into a psychological nightmare, where guilt, grief and professional rivalry blur into something toxic. The closer Collins gets to the truth, the more isolated he becomes and the more dangerous the game turns.
This collection brings together Allan Guthrie’s razor-sharp novellas and short fiction, led by the acclaimed Bye Bye Baby, and showcases his gift for moral ambiguity, dark humour and sudden, brutal turns.
This volume includes the novellas and stories:
- Bye Bye Baby
Kill Clock
Hilda’s Big Day Out
Your Mother Should Know
Call Me, I’m Dying
Killing MumPraise for Bye Bye Baby:
The approach is so fresh that it makes the whole thing feel like the first time I've read a police story"
— Do Some Damage
"...a purely original, funny, sharp piece of writing. It has a plot that develops in an unorthodox, non-linear fashion--hardly resembling many of the police procedurals I've read. It's often noted that Guthrie is one of the top working mystery writers, and he certainly lives up to that reputation..."
— Death By Killing
"A story that moves quickly, in short chapters of crisp prose, with plenty of plot turns to hold the attention, and characters you can love and others you can hate... Like Guthrie's full-length novels, Bye Bye Baby is sly, noir as all hell (more noir than some, actually), and it just might bring a tear of pity to your eyes. It's a police procedural filled with incident and back story, and man, what an ending."
— Detectives Beyond Borders
"...a dark, clever, funny and sad story which races along to reach a smart conclusion. A tough and lovely slice of the hard side of life."
— You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?
Genre: Mystery