The Missing
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'Remarkable...a rip-roaring adventure novel with a true depth of feeling' Sunday Times
'A joy to read' Herald
The First World War ended the day Sam Simoneaux's regiment reached France, but he saw more than enough of its ravages. Returning to New Orleans, he determines to put mayhem and destruction behind him, and to make a fresh start with his wife. But when a little girl is abducted on his watch at a department store, he has no choice but to help find her.
Steeped in the langorous rhythms and music of Prohibition-era Louisiana, The Missing vividly evokes a ragged frontier nation where violence is normal and the law easy to dodge. Relentlessly suspenseful and profoundly affecting, this is an enthralling tale of vengeance, conscience and redemption by an exceptional writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bayou shepherd of half-sunk souls, Gautreaux returns to the land of the lost and the lonely in his haunting and transient third book (after The Clearing). Post-WWI Louisiana is a "root-buckled" and "magnolia-haunted" underworld for seedy, drunken mobs and twisted backwoods families. Floating through the chaos is Sam Simoneaux, who, "half dead" after the slaughter of his parents and the later loss of his two-year-old son to fever, undertakes a quest to find a missing girl. Encountering embittered thieves, forlorn vaudevillians and icy bourgeoisie, Simoneaux is a keen observer who can find the one good stitch of humanity in an otherwise sordid tableau, even as his investigation begins to connect back to his family's murders. He is also a refreshingly candid voice, brimming with a lyrical intensity that graces some of the best Southern literature. Though the hasty, romantic wrapup to Sam's investigation and his refusal to exact revenge on his family's murderers emotionally tepid even through the novel's decisive climax obscure Gautreaux's finer redemptive tones, Sam's struggle to redeem the memories of his son and parents sustains the book's raw beauty.
