Forgive THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT its trendy title. Welsh writer Kate Hamer’s debut novel sounds like a lazy attempt to cash in on the popularity of runaway hits like THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and GONE GIRL, but this tense, heart-rending book about a kidnapped daughter and her grief-stricken mother more than stands on its own merits.

On a foggy spring day, eight-year-old Carmel, the titular girl, vanishes from a storytelling festival she’s attending with Beth, her harried yet loving single mother. Search parties fan out across the countryside, but the preternaturally intelligent (yet occasionally spacy) Carmel is nowhere to be found. Days stretch into months, then years, as Beth must learn to live without her daughter, even as she clings to the belief that her child will someday return to her.

"Hamer is on the hunt for emotional truth here, and the who, what and where of Carmel’s abduction matter less than how she and her mother cope with their feelings of grief and loss after their separation. She tells the story of Carmel’s disappearance with grace and sensitivity, resulting in a book with far more nuance than a typical by-the-numbers missing child story."

Meanwhile, Carmel is fighting to keep the memory of Beth alive. Her abductor, a masterful manipulator, tells the girl her mother has died in a car accident. He’s her estranged grandfather, he explains, and she’s going to live with him and his companion Dorothy from now on. Broken-hearted, isolated and confused, Carmel takes him at his word, attempting to adapt to her strange new life without forgetting her old one. Grandfather, it emerges, is an itinerant American preacher, and how he ended up in the UK, why he snatched Carmel and where he’s taking her are revealed only gradually. Suffice to say, his intentions are probably not what you think.

All of this would be a compelling enough mystery, but what elevates the novel is the author’s fluid language and inventive storytelling. Vaguely supernatural elements that would be frankly unbelievable in a lesser writer’s hands seem plausible in Hamer’s and give the book a fable-like quality. The nods to classic children’s tales are everywhere --- in Carmel’s Red Riding Hood-esque coat; in the casual cruelty of Dorothy, who reminds Carmel of Snow White’s evil stepmother; in the way Beth says she’s “as exhausted as the princess who was made to dance, over hill and dale, by her slippers.” The chapters told from Carmel’s perspective have a particularly dream-like quality. Beth knows precisely how many days her daughter has been missing, but Carmel’s grasp of how much time has passed, where she is and sometimes even her own name is often shaky. “How can you be nine and not know about it?” she wonders when she realizes her birthday has come and gone unnoticed by anyone, including herself. “How can that even be possible?”

Carmel may have missed her birthday, but she stubbornly refuses to forget who she really is, even as she comes to accept that her other life is gone forever. She always tries to wear a red coat and places special emphasis on remembering her real name. “Carmel gets lost sometimes… When that happens I get some paper and write ‘My name is Carmel’ a hundred times. I keep it in my pocket.”

Beth’s journey is slightly less dramatic than her daughter’s, but no less fascinating. After Carmel’s disappearance, she’s finally able to reconnect with her own parents, from whom she’s been estranged for many years. On a visit to her childhood home, she discovers her bedroom, left untouched since she ran away as a teen. “Maybe it’s not just me,” she realizes. “[P]erhaps many women keep shrines for their daughters.”

Readers looking for a straightforward thriller likely will be disappointed by THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT’s focus on the internal lives of its two main characters rather than on the details of the crime and subsequent investigation. Hamer is on the hunt for emotional truth here, and the who, what and where of Carmel’s abduction matter less than how she and her mother cope with their feelings of grief and loss after their separation. She tells the story of Carmel’s disappearance with grace and sensitivity, resulting in a book with far more nuance than a typical by-the-numbers missing child story. The only problem is that the tale she weaves is so compelling, and the need to find out what happens to Carmel and Beth so urgent, that readers risk missing out on her lovely and poetic language as they race to the novel’s conclusion.