Missing Person
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From acclaimed thriller writer Sarah Lotz, hailed by Stephen King as "vastly entertaining," a new novel about a group of amateur detectives infiltrated by the sadistic killer whose crimes they're investigating.
Reclusive bookseller Shaun Ryan has always believed that his uncle Teddy died in a car accident twenty years ago. Then he learns the truth: Teddy fled his home in Catholic, deeply conservative County Wicklow, Ireland, for New York and hasn't been heard from since. None of Shaun's relatives will reveal why they lied about his uncle's death or why they want Shaun to leave the whole affair alone.
But Shaun has a burning need to find out the truth. His search is unsuccessful until he's contacted by Chris Guzman, a woman who runs a website dedicated to matching missing-persons cases with unidentified bodies. Chris and her team of cold-case obsessives suspect that Shaun is looking for the "Boy in the Dress," one victim in a series of gay men murdered by the same killer.
But who are these internet fanatics really, and how do they know so much about a case that has stumped police for decades? Soon armchair sleuths and professional investigators are on a collision course with a sadistic serial killer who's gotten away with his crimes for far too long - and now they're in his sights.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1996, a dead white male with a cranial fracture is found on the outskirts of Millar, Minn., in this disappointing thriller from Lotz (The White Road). The unidentified murder victim, who's wearing "a pink prom-style dress," is nicknamed the Boy in the Dress. Ellen Caine, a stay-at-home mom who lives close to where the body was discovered, takes an interest in the case; she belongs to an online forum devoted to identifying "the remains of missing people." But no progress on giving him a name is made until 2017, when a stranger tells Shaun Ryan, who works in an Irish bookstore, that Shaun's late uncle, Teddy, didn't die in a car accident two decades earlier, as Shaun believed; instead, he traveled to the U.S. before dropping out of sight. Shaun's online request for information reaches Ellen, who works with her forum colleagues to determine whether Teddy is the Boy in the Dress. Early on, it's clear that one of them is hiding some dark secrets, but Lotz fails to generate much suspense en route to the flat climax. In previous books, she's been better at giving her characters depth. Hopefully, she'll return to form next time.
