March 29th, 1975 is a day that the parents of Heather and
Sunny Bethany will never forget. In WHAT THE DEAD KNOW, a
normal everyday outing turns tragic when two sisters never
return home from their trip to the mall. For years the
parents of the Bethany girls prayed for the safe return of
their daughters, but after 30 years has passed they have
given up any hope. The mother, Miriam Bethany, has since
divorced and moved to Mexico. The father, Dave, has passed
away. The lead detective, Chet Willoughby, has since
retired but still holds the unsolved case close to his
heart.
A hit and run accident leads to the perpetrator being
questioned by police. Instead of explaining what happened,
the woman tells the police she is one of the Bethany
girls. The detective is young and not familiar with the 30
year old case so the name doesn't ring a bell with him.
After going to the hospital for her injuries, she refuses
to tell the police anymore info about who she is. After
some questioning, the girl claims to be Heather Bethany,
the younger of the missing and presumed dead Bethany
girls. ''Heather'' goes on to tell of her harrowing
kidnapping and claims to have been held captive for
numerous years, to finally be let free at 18 years old.
She claims a police officer was her kidnapper.
No one believes this girl is actually Heather Bethany. The
detective in charge of the case is a young man by the name
of Kevin Infante. He enlists the help of retired detective
Chet Willoughby to help him solve this 30 year old case.
Where has Heather been for all these years? Why chose to
reveal her identity now? Where is Sunny Bethany? Was a
police officer really responsible for the kidnapping of
the Bethany girls?
The story spans back and forth from present to past and
has numerous points of view. WHAT THE DEAD KNOW seemed
like a promising book, but fell flat for me. The
characters were not likeable, the story jumped all over
the place, the reasoning and explanation of the ending was
far fetched, there was no suspense, and the writing just
left me bored and uninterested. The truth isn't revealed
until the last 30 pages or so, and the shock of it leaves
the reader to feel lied to and fooled. There were no clues
as to the ending which left me with no way of even
suspecting the outcome. Overall, this was a tame mystery
that did not blow me away.
Thirty years
ago two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. Their
bodies were
never found and those familiar with the case have always
been tortured
by these questions: How do you kidnap two girls? Who—or
what—could have lured the two sisters away from a busy mall on a
Saturday afternoon without leaving behind a single clue or
witness?
Now a clearly disoriented woman involved in a rush-hour
hit-and-run
claims to be the younger of the long-gone Bethany sisters.
But her
involuntary admission and subsequent attempt to stonewall
investigators
only deepens the mystery. Where has she been? Why has she
waited so
long to come forward? Could her abductor truly be a beloved
Baltimore
cop? There isn't a shred of evidence to support her story,
and every
lead she gives the police seems to be another dead end—a dying,
incoherent man, a razed house, a missing grave, and a family
that
disintegrated long ago, torn apart not only by the crime but
by the
fissures the tragedy revealed in what appeared to be the perfect
household.
In a story that moves back and forth
across the
decades, there is only one person who dares to be skeptical
of a woman
who wants to claim the identity of one Bethany sister
without revealing
the fate of the other. Will he be able to discover the truth?
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