You can never truly bury the past.

Eighteen years ago, a baby went missing – snatched from under his parents' eyes. He was never seen again.

Eighteen years ago, Ian Turner took part in a robbery. His partner-in-crime, a habitual crook called Alan Milner, hit a man and put the poor guy in a coma. Ian got himself a cast-iron alibi for that night but Alan was eventually caught and sent to prison.

Now, eighteen years later, Alan Milner's out of prison – and Ian's scared.

Meanwhile, the missing baby, now an adult, is still missing.

A dead body is found on a canal boat, the back of his head caved in. DI Benedict Paige soon learns that the victim was a manipulative bully and a thug. No one liked him. But was he involved in the abduction of that baby? As Benedict trawls through the murky evidence, he knows the two cases are somehow entwined.

But how exactly?

The Canal Boat Killer is the fifth novel in the Detective Inspector Benedict Paige series of police procedural thrillers from British crime writer, Joshua Black.