THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR

A priest and his wife help to solve a cold case in small-town Oregon in this mystery.

Father Matthew and his wife, Maggie,are hosting their friend Father Francesco, who’s visiting their new home and parish of Biggs Junction, Oregon, at the beginning of Kelley's novel. Father Francesco, on a break from his usual work writing encyclicals for the Vatican, decides to go for a walk, exploring the rocks under a nearby bridge spanning the Columbia River, which forms the border between Oregon and Washington. But what starts as a casual outing quickly turns much darker when Father Francesco finds a human skeleton among the rocks. The three friends call the local police, who automatically think of the 5-year-old unsolved case of the Celilo girls—13-year-old twins who disappeared without a trace. If the skeleton is the remains of one of those girls, could there be a chance that the other sister is still alive? Father Matthew and Maggie describe themselves to the police as “pretty good” amateur sleuths and are soon receiving sage advice from a local officer and helping out with the case. Father Matthew and Maggie come to know Biggs Junction and its people in ways they never expected. Over many chapters, Kelley develops the mystery quite slowly and methodically as the investigation gradually broadens to include possible police corruption, inequities at the local Native Americanreservation, and the intricacies of the dark world of human trafficking. Overall, the author follows a fairly standard template for amateur-detective crime novels, but she has a winning pair in her two lead characters, whose straightforward compassion and humanity stand in refreshing contrast to the book’s darker elements. The deliberate pacing sometimes results in some stodgy sections, but the author does effectively convey the feeling of long-buried lurking evil, and some readers will be reminded of the work of bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman.

A colorful and proficient missing child mystery.