A mother fights to keep her composure as she hunts for her missing child in this nuanced, literate thriller from the husband-wife writing team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (Killing Me Softly). Shortly before Christmas, Nina Landry, a divorced mother of two living on isolated Sandling Island somewhere in the south of England, is getting ready for a family vacation in Florida that will include her new marine biologist boyfriend. Blindsided by a surprise 40th birthday party, Nina is further disconcerted when her 15-year-old daughter, Charlie, who was supposed to help with the packing, fails to come home from a slumber party. Nina's seamless first-person account of the next 24 hours mines the frustration and feelings of helplessness that come with any investigation slowed by the rigmarole of police work. This engrossing read captures the importance of the often overlooked and underappreciated minutiae of everyday life while commanding a deeply personal reaction in readers. (Apr.)
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A desperate mom tracks a missing child in another of French's spellbinders (Catch Me When I Fall, 2006, etc.). It's getaway time for Nina Landry and her brood-two children plus Christian, her lover. What they're getting away from is bleak Sandling Island, 60 miles from London, and the "pinched, icy days of English winter." They're bound for a Christmas holiday in Florida, but now there's a hitch. What happened to Charlie? She is Nina's 15-year-old daughter, headstrong, unpredictable, an adolescent's adolescent. She'd been at a sleepover, a party that had, in a blink, gone from acceptably decorous to wildly hormonal, and from which she vanished. When Nina calls the police, a well-meaning constable attempts to reassure. She'll turn up. " ‘Teenagers have secrets,' " he explains. He's right, of course, and over the next several hours, he's repeatedly, chillingly, corroborated as Nina delves as deeply as she can into Charlie's personal life. But Charlie does not turn up. While her whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery, her friends profess to be clueless, the police continue to comfort and, in Nina's view, underperform deplorably. No choice then but for Nina to pick up the slack, since it's clear to her, at least, that something terrible has happened, that the clock is not her friend and that she herself constitutes Charlie's best chance. Strong, resourceful and, yes, scared silly, she knocks on doors, experiences the unkindness of certain strangers-whose detachment amounts to cruelty-but at last uncovers something that matters, something frightening, true, but revealing: Charlie's abandoned bike. The police become serious now, even more so when suddenly forced to confront the possibility thatCharlie's disappearance might be linked to an earlier disappearance-another missing teenager, a friend of Charlie's, found murdered. Though one or two plotlines remain dangling at the end, oh how the story grabs.
To celebrate her fortieth birthday, Nina Landry’s daughter, Charlie, throws her a surprise party just before she is to leave on holiday. Friends mingle, ex-lovers show, but Nina is preoccupied: Charlie isn't there. Her preoccupation turns to concern, which turns to worry and then panic. Anne Flosnik's voices vary in tone and pitch as she portrays characters who range from teenagers to Nina’s agitated ex-husband. Flosnik’s expert pacing propels the story as the near hysterical mother deals with unresponsive police, shallow friends, and uncaring neighbors. Flosnik's narration keeps up with Nina's riveting one-day search for her daughter. M.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
