A Place of Execution

In the winter of 1963, the ancient and closed-off village of Scardale in northern England remains a self-contained world apart from the times. Thirteen-year-old Alison disappears on a bitterly cold night without a trace and without witnesses. The villagers instinctively resist outside intervention, but the missing-person case eventually brings in the police. Young and determined Detective Inspector George Bennett is resolved to find Alison at any cost, yet runs headlong into the villagers' silence and hostility; media intrusion and the village's complex family relationships make every step of the investigation difficult. When the case appears to reach a dead end, several pieces of fatal evidence surface, a suspect is identified, tried, and convicted, and the case is sealed. More than thirty years later, the writer Catherine reopens the long-buried case to write a novel. She visits those involved, rereads the files, and gradually notices irreconcilable cracks between details treated as settled conclusions. As she goes deeper, the truth buried for decades slowly surfaces, and perhaps it is not only the defendant of that year who is truly on trial—the isolated little village ultimately becomes a place of execution where human nature and morality are put to the question.