Missing Joseph

In Missng Joseph, Lynley's friend Simon Allcourt St. James and his wife Deborah are on holiday in the village of Winslough, hoping to find solace from the miscarriages that have put their marriage under severe stress. However, they arrive to find that the vicar, Robin Sage, with whom Deborah has dealt in the past, is dead, from what seems to be accidental poisoning.

The investigation by local constable Colin Shepherd has ruled the poisoning accidental: Sage's dinner host, local herbalist Juliet Spence, having mistaken water hemlock for wild parsnip. However, as Shepherd is Juliet's lover, this seems suspicious to Simon, who calls in Lynley of New Scotland Yard to reopen the case. Lynley discovers buried secrets and past scandals in the Lancashire village, including the fact that the victim had an infant son who died of SIDS and a wife who apparently took her own life. As it becomes increasingly clear that the poisoning of Robin Sage was not an accident, the narrative looks at the tortuous nature of human relationships, and the lengths to which a mother will go for the sake of her child.

The book received mediocre reviews, with critics commenting adversely on the wordiness of the dialogue, and the fact that Lynley and Havers take a lesser role than expected in the plot.^[2] Kirkus Reviews criticizes the "polarized characters too often engaged in lengthy, numbing speechifying",^[2] although Publishers Weekly calls it "a...deftly plotted, highly atmospheric novel."^[1]