She Treads Softly: Finding Sophie

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Finding Sophie

Finding Sophie by Imran Mahmood
3/5/24; 352 pages
Random House

Finding Sophie by Imran Mahmood combines a domestic drama as parents desperately search for their missing daughter with a courtroom drama because someone is charged with murder. It is highly recommended.

Harry and Zara King’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Sophie, has been missing for six weeks and they feel the police have stopped investigating. The deeply grieving parents especially want them to question the man living in number 210 on their street. They went door to door, talking to everyone in the area to see if they saw or know something about Sophie. Every one talked to them or answered a questionnaire they left except the man in 210. Now Harry is obsessed with the man in 210 and why he refuses to talk to them or answer the questionnaire. The standoff is about to escalate. From the opening we know one of the parents will be charged with murder.

The narrative unfolds between the alternating perspectives of Harry and Zara. It also covering events in a dual timeline, the weeks after Sophie's disappearance and a year in the future during a murder trial. The slow start kept my interest low, but once Harry's obsession took hold the pace becomes steady, with some small jumps in action along the way. There are pieces of information and clues provided during this section that don't pay off until much later. The slow start is redeemed by the ending when the pace and action pick up.

Where Mahmood excels is in his depiction of desperate, grieving parents, Harry and Zara. Both are handling their frustration and grief very differently, but their actions reflect their personalities. Their grief also begins to put a strain on their relationship.

The action in the court case also increases the tension. Keep in mind this novel is set in the U.K., so the court action is different from that in U.S. courtrooms. The dual timelines also begin to merge here to explain more of what happened. The ending is worth the journey. Thanks to Random House for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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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.