The Missing Ones
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3.4 • 20 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Twists that’ll just take your breath away. A salty, stormy and seductive read.”
—Mario Giordano, author of Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna
Finisterre Island, off the coast of Maine, is beautiful and remote—the kind of place tourists love to visit. But not everyone is welcome. A dilapidated Victorian house has become home to a group of squatters and junkies, and strangers have a habit of bringing trouble. A young boy disappeared during the summer, and though he was found safely, the incident stirred suspicion among locals. Now another child is missing. Summoned to the island by a cryptic text, Hester Thursby discovers a community cleaning up from a devastating storm—and uncovers a murder.
Soon Hester begins to connect the crime and the missing children. And as she untangles the secrets at the center of the small community, she finds grudges and loyalties that run deep, poised to converge with a force that will once again shake her convictions about the very nature of right and wrong . . .
“Intense. . . . Hill is adept at building compassion for his characters in a tight-knit social web while implicating them in dark thoughts and actions. He remains a writer to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hill's intense second Hester Thursby mystery finds Harvard librarian Hester, still traumatized from her experiences in 2018's Little Comfort, doing the best she can to raise the abandoned four-year-old daughter of her boyfriend's sister, Daphne, who's also Hester's best college friend, in Somerville, Mass. Meanwhile, itinerant Annie has been squatting for months with junkies in an old Victorian house on Little Finisterre Island, Maine. In a small community with long-held secrets and low tolerance for outsiders, Annie feels threatened. Her worries increase as a storm approaches during a search for a missing child. A major reveal well into the book leads to Hester's traveling to Maine to help Annie. Fans of Little Comfort will enjoy the resolution of open threads in Hester's personal story, but the chaos in Annie's world and everyone pulled into it holds the key to the novel's satisfying tension. Hill is adept at building compassion for his characters in a tight-knit social web while implicating them in dark thoughts and actions. He remains a writer to watch.
