JUST ANOTHER MISSING PERSON

McAllister’s novel isn’t “just another missing person” story but a twisty exploration of professional and familial responsibility, the anonymity of the internet, and the slippery slope to criminality.

DCI Julia Day is a dedicated, some would even say work-obsessed, detective in Portishead, England, so when she’s summoned from dinner with her husband and daughter to investigate a report of missing woman Olivia Johnson, she’s all in. As she drives to Olivia's apartment, she’s surprised by a man in her back seat and by the message he carries: She is to plant evidence that will point toward the guilt of one Matthew James—or the blackmailer will reveal the fact that a year ago, Julia covered up a crime committed by her daughter, Genevieve. For Julia, there is no question: She has done, and will continue to do, whatever she can to protect Genevieve, and she consoles herself with the hope that if she can find Olivia alive, then no real harm will have been done. But when the missing woman turns up, she’s not who Julia thought she was. Julia has to decide whom she can trust with her secrets in order to finally connect all the loose ends from a previous case to this one and to Genevieve’s mistake—and figure out whether she still has a future in the police force. The twist in this book comes out of left field and is, in that way, extremely successful. Once the pieces fall into place and all is revealed, however, it feels a little familiar—but that’s the pleasure and challenge of a really good police procedural, as McAllister’s is. Julia holds her own as a character; her moral quandary is completely believable, and her struggles to do the right thing, at work and in her relationships, render her understandably human. Though McAllister shares the narrative across several voices out of plot-driven necessity, Julia is definitely the center.

Dips a bit into formula by the end, but oh! What a twist in the middle.