The most impressive debut of the year, David Levien's City of the Sun (Bantam, £10), targets every parent's worst nightmare: the vanishing child. When Jamie Gabriel, 12, doesn't return from his paper-round, his family turn to ex-cop Frank Behr. The PI, too, has a burden to bear: the death of his own seven-year-old son. Levien makes you feel the Gabriels' pain and despair. The plot, both clever and convincing, grips from the off.