Danny Collins

After almost 10 years, Madeleine is still missing. I hope she can be found.

The tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann which occured in Portugal May 2007, to this day is still a mystery.
Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of 3 May 2007 from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal, sparking what one newspaper called "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history"
After almost 10 years, Madeleine is still missing.
This book is well written and helps you understand the anguish of this terrible and sad situation and events leading up to it.
In this book you can find detailed background on Portugals legal system in an authorititive manner which helped to explain the difficulties that the average or non-average person had in understanding Portugals different methods.
The book seems logical and food for thought about what really happened.

A top detective, Dave Edgar, who worked with Madeleine McCann’s parents has suggested (in April 2017) she could be alive,
living with her captor and oblivious that she is even missing.
Despite a decade with no answers her parents have said they have never given up hope of seeing their daughter again.

Miracles happen every day. I hope Madeleine can be found.… (altro)

The case of Madeleine McCann gripped Europe during 2007, when the three year old went missing from her holiday villa never to be seen again. Her mother, Kate McCann has recently released a book telling the family's version of her disappearance and I thought it was an opportune time to read the earlier published account of the disappearance by investigative journalist Danny Collins.

Whilst at first glance the book seems to be an impartial account of the case, it soon becomes apparent that it is really written from the position that the McCann's were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, even in leaving their children unattended, and focuses on discrediting the police investigation and criticizing the media; slightly hypocritical of a investigative journalist. At points the writer goes off on a tangent, telling tantalising stories about other missing children, even those who have been missing for decades and bear no relevance to the McCann case, abuse in children's homes or accusing all gypsies of being child abductors who frequently traffic children across Europe to use in begging operations.

Overall the book could have really been half the length, detailing the facts of the case, and many of the chapters seem out-of-sequence and almost cut and paste from random articles on child abduction, rather than being an analysis of the investigation. As it was published in 2008 it is also woefully out of date, although progress in the case has been slow, and Madeleine has still not been found. It's only redeeming features are is it's ease to read and that it supports the less sensational theory that Madeleine wandered off from an unlocked and unsupervised villa rather than being abducted from her bed. It's rating is given as I did manage to finish it, albeit skipping paragraphs near the end, but other than that was not a joy to read, and a waste of £4 considering all the information could readily be found online.… (altro)