It is the week before Christmas when Edith Hind goes missing. Her boyfriend had arrived home after a weekend away to find Edith the door unlocked, blood in the flat, and Edith missing. Edith's father is the personal physician to the Royal family and feels that should afford special consideration when trying to solve the case. Detective Mannon Bradshaw is on the team trying to find out what happened to Edith, but she is preoccupied with her own issues. As a single thirty-nine-year-old woman, the loneliness of being chronically single is a distraction from the case. She turns her phone off to go on bad dates and misses some critical information about the case. As the case unfolds a picture is painted of the young Edith that is not what anybody who knows her expected. Why was she calling the convicted felon? Was she having an affair with her best friend? How is her disappearance connected with the body of the teenaged boy that was just found? Mannon and her team exhaust every lead, but will it be enough to find Edith Hind?
Missing, Presumed is a methodical, sharply-written mystery novel. Mannon Bradshaw is the main character of the book, but the story is told from her perspective, the perspective of her colleague, Davy, and from the perspective of Miriam, Edith's mother. The three different narrators gave unique perspectives of the story. Edith obviously came from an affluent family and her family was willing to pull out all the stops to find her. While it was easy to understand why they were pulling strings, it made it difficult to like her dad. Mannon was easy to like and maybe even pity. Her loneliness could be felt with every bad date she went on. She was so desperate to find love that it did interfere with her work. That made her appear to be so obviously flawed. It was sad, but as someone was single for a very long time before getting married, I get it. I get her desperate need to find somebody to call her own and can forgive her, even if she can't forgive herself. The end was pretty much a shock to me. I kept expecting this one character to be tied to Edith and Taylor (the boy), but I was way wrong. I like being wrong when it comes to mystery novels. CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS.
Bottom line - I love it when an author can "fool" me with their story. With most mystery/suspense novels, the obvious guess is usually the correct guess. That was not the case with Missing, Presumed. Susie Steiner has written an intricate tale that will keep you guessing!
Details:
- Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
- On Twitter
- Pages: 368
- Publisher: Random House Publishing
- Publication Date:
- 6/28/2016
- Buy it Here!
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