She Treads Softly: Just Another Missing Person

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Just Another Missing Person

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister
8/1/23; 384 pages
HarperCollins

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister is a highly recommended heart-stopping police procedural and thriller concerning a missing-person case and an impossible moral choice.

DCI Julia Day is the lead detective investigating the disappearance of 22-year-old Olivia Johnson. Olivia is on CCTV entering a dead end alley and never walked out. Julia know the time this case will involve and the potential heartbreak for the family. What she doesn't expect is an ethical dilemma, but this happens when a man blackmails her into planting false evidence or he will expose the biggest secret she has, one that will threaten the safety of her daughter, Genevieve. And there is one thing that Julia knows: she will anything she can to protect Genevieve.

After a slower start when all the characters and the case is presented, the pace picks up and doesn't stop until the end. There is a surprising and shocking twist about half way through the novel that will shake the world of everyone reading it since it is so unexpected. After the major twist, the procedural aspects of the novel become stronger.

The narrative is told through multiple points-of-view, with Julia being the dominate voice. This plot device works well in the novel as you question where the truth lies. Julia is a fully realized character, obviously with flaws, but also with strengths. Another excellent novel from McAllister.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via Edelweiss.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.