It seems like years since I’ve read a Ruth Dugdall book. And, for once, my increasingly ridiculous book database isn’t much help.
It tells me I read The Woman Before Me, The Sacrificial Man and Humber Boy B in 2022. Except that doesn’t necessarily mean I did. I have always kept records, but an old computer deciding one day that starting up was apparently optional took several years of them with it. The 2022 and 2023 sections of my rebuilt database therefore became something of a rescue operation, and include books I know I read but whose original dates disappeared along with the computer.
So I know I’ve read Ruth Dugdall before, and I know I’ve read all of the Cate Austin books. I just haven’t got the foggiest idea exactly when. What I do know is that it has been a long time, and Mother Missing has finally brought me back to Cate Austin.
Back to Cate Austin
Ruth Dugdall‘s Mother Missing is the fifth Cate Austin novel and, although there has been a sizeable gap since we last saw her, slipping back into Cate’s world was remarkably easy. Although this does give me another opportunity to campaign for something I firmly believe should be compulsory: every book in a series should begin with a “Previously…” chapter.
Not twenty pages or a complete retelling of the previous four books. Just a couple of pages reminding me who everybody is, what happened last time and why I should recognise the name of somebody who hasn’t appeared since book three. Television worked this out years ago. “Previously on…” Perfect.
Books, meanwhile, sometimes seem to assume I’ve spent the intervening years maintaining detailed character maps and revising for an examination. I haven’t. I’ve read hundreds of other books and can occasionally walk into the kitchen without remembering why I’m there.
And Mother Missing is a particularly good example of why my campaign is necessary because there were eleven years between the fourth Cate Austin book and this one. Eleven years! After that length of time I don’t think a “Previously…” chapter should merely be encouraged. I think it should be a legal requirement. The author may have spent that time living with these characters, but the reader hasn’t. Give us a fighting chance.
Right. Campaign over.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to find my feet again with Cate. She is living in Luxembourg with her daughter Amelia and preparing for her future with Olivier when Suffolk comes calling again, and not in a particularly cheerful fashion.
Her sister Lizzie has disappeared from rehab just as their abusive father has been released early from prison. Cate heads back to England, partly to find Lizzie and partly because Cate Austin was never likely to sit in Luxembourg waiting for somebody else to sort things out.
At the same time, another woman is missing. Bronte Lowe is a single mother, former Royal Navy officer and now works at a nuclear power station. After witnessing a hit-and-run, she disappears.
Then there is Freya, who has grown up surrounded by crime and is trying very hard not to repeat the family tradition. She has moved in with her boyfriend Adam at his isolated home on the Suffolk coast. Unfortunately, Adam is one of Cate’s offenders and something about the house isn’t right. You can probably see the problem developing.
Three women
One of the things I particularly liked about Mother Missing is that it does not simply follow Cate around while she investigates a disappearance. The story moves between Cate, Bronte and Freya, initially making it seem as though they are occupying three different stories.
Cate has returned to Suffolk looking for her sister. Bronte has her own problems surrounding the nuclear site and the hit-and-run, while Freya is trying to build a new life and gradually realising that her supposedly fresh start may have come with some fairly substantial small print.
You know they are going to collide, you just don’t know how, and I am certainly not going to tell you. Ruth gradually pulls those strands closer together, dropping enough information to make you think you’ve worked everything out before quietly demonstrating that you haven’t. Which is annoying, but in a good way.
Suffolk again
Obviously, the Suffolk setting helps. I have established over the last few weeks that I become disproportionately excited when somewhere I know appears in a book.
Come Up Screaming gave me Felixstowe streets, a house I knew and characters based on people I still know. Holmhill Farm gave me the 1953 Felixstowe flood, Cornwall Road and an entirely fictional ancestor. Mother Missing gives me Ipswich and the Suffolk coast. At least Ruth hasn’t invented a murderous Versey. Yet.
There is something about reading crime fiction set in your own part of the world that gives it an extra layer. A place name appears and you don’t have to construct it from the author’s description because you already have a picture. You know the roads, you know the landscape and you know the particular shade of grey the Suffolk sky is contractually required to maintain for much of the winter.
Mother Missing uses that landscape well. The coast, the isolated house and the community surrounding the nuclear power station give the story a slightly claustrophobic quality despite much of it taking place in wide-open spaces. There is always the feeling that something is hidden just out of sight and, frequently, it is.
Ruth knows this world
The other thing that immediately returned from those earlier Cate Austin books is the authenticity around probation. Before becoming a full-time writer, Ruth worked in youth justice and then spent ten years as a probation officer, and it shows.
Not because the book stops every twenty pages for a lecture on the criminal justice system. Quite the opposite. Cate’s professional instincts simply feel believable. She watches people and listens to what they say and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t say.
She also understands that offenders are rarely conveniently divided into Good People and Bad People. Somebody can simultaneously be a victim, an offender, frightened, manipulative and in desperate need of help. That moral messiness is much more interesting than having Cate wander around spotting villains from fifty yards away.
There are some properly dark subjects in Mother Missing. Abuse, drugs, violence, coercion and the consequences of people using power over others all run through the story, but they never feel as though they’ve been thrown in simply to make everything nastier. They belong to the characters and their stories.
Seven days
The whole story takes place across seven days in December, which probably explains why I rattled through it. Each day moves the various stories forward and the structure creates a natural countdown. As the week progresses, the connections become clearer, the questions get bigger and my confidence in having solved everything becomes increasingly misplaced.
Standard procedure, really. I am very good at solving fictional crimes right up until the author reveals what actually happened.
There are enough twists here to keep changing your interpretation of people without reaching the point where everybody suddenly turns out to have an evil twin who has been living in the loft since 1987. The eventual convergence of the different stories is particularly satisfying, and that’s about as much as I’m saying.
Welcome back, Cate
What surprised me most was how quickly Cate Austin felt familiar again. I couldn’t tell you exactly when I last encountered her because the original records are somewhere inside a computer that decided to take several years of my reading history to the grave with it, but I can tell you why it’s been a while.
It isn’t my fault.
There were eleven years between the fourth Cate Austin book and Mother Missing. Within a few chapters, though, I remembered why I’d enjoyed the Cate Austin novels in the first place.
Ruth Dugdall writes crime slightly differently. The crime matters, obviously. There is a missing woman, there are secrets, there is danger and there are plenty of reasons to keep turning the pages, but the people behind those things matter more.
Why somebody behaves as they do is generally more interesting than simply discovering what they did, and Mother Missing is full of people making decisions because they are frightened, desperate, damaged, protective or convinced they are doing the right thing. Sometimes they even are.
Another Felixstowe author
There is also something rather nice about this being my third recent review of a locally connected author. Steffan Piper gave me the Felixstowe of my childhood, Julie Missen gave me Felixstowe history and a fictional Versey, and Ruth Dugdall has now given me a dark Suffolk psychological thriller and reunited me with a character who has been missing for rather longer than anyone in Mother Missing.
My Felixstowe Authors section is becoming less of a directory and more of a personal reading instruction. Perhaps that’s exactly what it should be. You can find the rest of my reading history, including the reconstructed years, in My Reading Life.
Mother Missing reminded me why I liked Cate Austin in the first place: intelligent crime fiction, complicated people, familiar Suffolk surroundings and enough misdirection to make me feel considerably less clever at the end than I did halfway through.
And this time I won’t have to wait eleven years. Cate Austin number six is due in 2027, which is excellent news.
Although I’d still like a “Previously…” chapter. I’m not getting any younger.
Mother Missing by Ruth Dugdall was published by HQ Digital on 24 September 2026.