Top-Notch New "Wounded Sleuth" from Lisa Gardner, BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

Before She Disappeared introduces what may be the most powerful sleuth of the decade, an “ordinary” woman driven to uncover the truth at any personal cost. There’s only one thing to ask for by the time the book ends: please, please, a sequel and a series.

The new thriller from Lisa Gardner, Before She Disappeared, cuts remarkable new ground. An intense and fast-paced investigative novel—practically a police procedural—it features the compelling presence of Frankie Elkin. Sober more than nine years, Frankie’s on a hunt for the only thing that eases her personal cravings: finding the lost.

Her arrival in the Mattapan section of Boston comes hard. White and female, she might as well wear a target or a sign that says “hurt me” in the rough district. But she’s there to find Angelique, a vanished high school student. Whatever search there’d been for “Angel” ended months ago, as far as Frankie can tell. Drugs, prostitution, or just leaving town, those are the common assumptions made about a kid on the wrong side of life.

But not by Frankie. Looking straight at the situation, she sees no reason that a high-achieving Haitian immigrant determined to save her family from deportation would just vanish and not even reassure her mom or brother. And Frankie’s got a plan for investigating and trying to find Angelique, as she’s done with fourteen earlier missing persons. Only this time she hopes, as she hopes every time, to find the person alive.

Taking up a job as a bartender may sound risky for her sobriety, but although booze hasn’t lost its appeal, she’s committed to something more powerful, the surge of adrenaline from finding the lost. Her first task: persuade the local bar owner to give her the job, as well as the empty upstairs living quarters. In spite of her white skin.

“He shakes his head. With more glasses to dry, he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me straight on. He still doesn’t say a word.

‘I work hard.’ I tick off a finger. ‘I’m on time, especially because I’m going to be living upstairs, and I won’t siphon your booze. I pour fast, I know how to change out a keg, and I’m an excellent listener. Everyone likes a good listener.’

‘They won’t like you.’

‘Neither did you, but you’re coming around. Give me a month. By then no one will notice my white skin or superior gender. I’ll just be another fixture behind the bar.’”

Why here? Because this is where Angelique and her relatives belong. And in a very short time, Frankie figures out why the hunt for this teen started late, ended early, and isn’t going anywhere. Partnering with a police detective who’s frustrated at the lack of progress, Frankie earns her way past his reluctance to trust her, and proves that her ability to listen—especially to teens and women—can reopen the case.

When Frankie discovers proof that the teen is still alive, and seeking help, that partnership with the local detective becomes essential. But it stays charged with anger and territory, and the hunger Frankie carries with her: consuming, propulsive, and perhaps entirely destructive. That’s similar to what drives the “kids” around her, including another missing teen, revealed as “the missing girl no one even knew was missing,” yet who sets a criminal enterprise into focus and ramps up the danger to all involved.

Gardner’s fierce and skillful blending of rage and despair and unhealable wounds makes Frankie an unforgettable protagonist. She can’t be called an amateur sleuth, because her impassioned searches have shown solid results. She has families that speak for her, because she cared enough to work for discovery of what happened to their loved ones. Yet she’s not paid by any of those. And she walks a knife edge of internal haunting.

Before She Disappeared introduces what may be the most powerful sleuth of the decade, an “ordinary” woman driven to uncover the truth at any personal cost. There’s only one thing to ask for by the time the book ends: please, please, a sequel and a series.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Keeping Up With Faye Kellerman: THE LOST BOYS, a Decker/Lazarus Mystery

 

[Originally appeared in the New York Journal of Books]

“Kellerman’s writing frames deep tenderness among her characters very well. The dropped plot threads can be irritating, but series readers will have faith that there’s a point to some of them, and that next year’s title will build on this year’s hints.”

The Lost Boys is the 26th in Faye Kellerman’s Decker/Lazarus series, and a warm and dense novel of investigative support, people who care about each other, and a good marriage—but also the tragedies that can erupt from well-meant friendships and small adventures.

Series readers will be able to slipstream along with the main characters, upstate New York detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina. New to the series? It helps to know that the name “Lazarus” on the cover and in the series title refers to the last name of Decker’s wife before she married him – and the teasing nickname “rabbi” that  Decker’s much younger investigative partner Tyler McAdams uses for him reflects Decker’s religious practice; he’s not a rabbi, but with his wife, he practices the traditions and food customs of observant Jews. All of which has little to do with the plot, but will help in following the narrative.

It will also be helpful to drop the customary attentiveness of mystery readers determined to solve the crime just before the detective gets there. The book’s early chapters in particular are full of mild errors in the text (people start in one direction, then go in another; someone is invited for one meal that gets skipped and you’re in the next day). Paying too close attention will be frustrating. Just go with the flow, and with Decker and McCabe, who’ll traipse through woods and across the north country, trying to catch up with a pair of missing persons and, at the same time, three more missing ones from a decade earlier.

Kellerman’s plot takes a really interesting idea and plays it into intriguing characters: If people are emancipated adults but have learning disabilities, what happens when they leave their assisted living locales? Should they be considered “missing” in the sense of police interest, or are they entitled to make their own life choices?

Decker’s team first hunts for Bertram Lanz, a “developmentally disabled” man who has either walked away from a field trip or been kidnapped. Since his parents are very wealthy, kidnap has to be on the table. Yet the parents mysteriously won’t return phone calls. When Lanz’s sweetheart also vanishes, plus a facility staff member who’d been close to Bertam, doubts about chasing after the missing adults cascade.

The young lady’s parents raise the first serious questions about this:

“‘She seemed to be doing better lately.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Am I right about that?’

‘Yes, I thought so.’ Alison looked up at the ceiling. ‘Maybe she was happy because she was planning her escape.’”

Similar questions arise in terms of three missing college students who vanished a decade earlier. Decker and McCabe enter the case, which began well before their time on the local police force, because a body turns up that appears to be one of the trio.

Turning around the scant facts on hand, along with more sets of uncommunicative parents of missing “adults,” the detectives start wondering what roles sex and drugs might have played in the distant past.

The third thread of suspense rises from concern over Peter and Rina’s foster son Gabe, whose disturbed birth mother has surfaced, along with a successfully criminal father and a man in India who could both pose threats to Gabe’s mother and thus to Gabe. Or at least to his heart. Again, what are the right choices in terms of the struggles of an adult who needs support but not a takeover? Which boys are lost, and which are just seeking independence?

Kellerman’s writing frames deep tenderness among her characters very well. The dropped plot threads can be irritating, but series readers will have faith that there’s a point to some of them, and that next year’s title will build on this year’s hints.

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Sarah Graves, New Maine Series: WINTER AT THE DOOR

Sarah Graves, Maine author of the clever "Home Repair Is Homicide" thriller series, launched a new series this month with WINTER AT THE DOOR. The great plus of introducing protagonist Lizzie Snow, a homicide investigator from Boston who's just taken a job in the Great North Woods of Maine, is Lizzie's knowledge of crime and investigation -- she's a professional, and used to taking care of herself. Within limits.

But Graves gives us a glimpse -- and only a glimpse -- of the wounds still bleeding for Lizzie. Something's gone terribly wrong in her family. It appears one of her relatives may have survived: a nine-year-old niece, Nicki. And the tip Lizzie Snow has, from her former (and faithless) boyfriend Dylan, says Nicki may be a hostage of some sort, living in the near-lawless wilderness of Aroostook County. That's why Lizzie's taken the anti-career move to the rural region. And it's already looking grim: Instead of a patrol slot, Sheriff Cody Chevrier has a grubby little office for her, and an assignment in community policing. Color Lizzie NOT impressed.

Still, Chevrier's move is a complex one. He's not just staffing an unexpected grant-funded position -- he's sneaking an experienced homicide cop into a situation where retired police officers around him are dying of assumed suicide, and he's convinced they've been murdered.

Lizzie does luck out in adopting, or really being adopted by, a local assistant willing to rehab her office practically overnight, bring in the communications gear she needs, and even walk her suddenly added canine companion for her. Of course, the Tattoo Kid -- nicknamed Spud, in this wide potato-farming region -- looks like a walking nightmare, with his piercings and more. But he's surprisingly competent, and for a while, Lizzie feels like she's got some good luck after all.

That is, until Dylan Hudson shows up, in the very manly flesh, to complicate almost everything. Turns out he's tracking criminal activity up here, too, and Lizzie can't deny there's still chemistry between them, even though she has every reason never to trust him in her personal life again.

Back to the title: This suspenseful two-track criminal investigation opens at the end of October, which in the north country really is the season of "winter at the door." But couldn't that expression also apply to the cold evil of a malicious psychopath loose in the area? And could Lizzie's missing niece be part of the same possible crime wave that's killing the sheriff's old colleagues?

Graves alternates points of view between Lizzie and the criminals here, which in many mysteries would lead to some sympathy for the wrongdoers. But not this time. In fact, I hadn't realized this Maine author could write the dark side so deftly and effectively -- I shuddered at a number of points.

This one is a good winter read, tightly plotted and all too believable. And if I quibbled with a couple of issues -- the distraction of not one but two suitors for Lizzie, her lack of teamwork, and a finale that didn't quite follow through on the level of evil proposed earlier in the book -- I also found this a compelling start to an exciting series. Grab this first title, and clear room on the shelf for the next one: The Girls She Left Behind. Considering the plot threads left unresolved at the end of WINTER AT THE DOOR, I'm already shivering with foreboding. I'll be following Lizzie Snow, for sure.