"Let yourself be captured and taken away by Missing Persons."
Reviewed by Lynn Cunningham
Posted May 21, 2011
Mystery
Kate Conway has been having quite a hard time of it lately.
First, she and her husband separate after many years of
marriage because he's fallen in love with someone else.
Before she can fully adjust to her new almost single status,
her husband is found dead. On top of all that, his mistress
wants to be her new best friend. This is all just a bit too
much to take in. Her husband's death may or may not have been murder and she
just can't let that go. In the middle of all this, she gets
offered a new television show called Missing Persons. It's a
show that lets Kate do what she does best: interview people
left behind after a loved one disappears. Her first show is
built around a missing girl named Theresa. She walked out of
her door one day and just never returned. After missing for
a year, there have been no clues as to what became of her.
It's Kate's job to interview her family, friends and
ex-lovers to see just what may have become of Theresa. Getting to the bottom of her husband's death has become very
important to Kate, but everyone around her is acting odd. So
it may take a bit longer to figure it all out, especially if
she ends up sitting in jail as a suspect. There are too many
questions to be answered for her to be trapped in that way. Simultaneously, Kate finds herself more and more intrigued
by Theresa's story, especially the more people she meets
that show a different side of Theresa. With an overbearing
and over protective mother, violent brother, a rather
indifferent boyfriend and a stalker ex-boyfriend looming
over her, could she have just walked away from everyone? One
thing is clear, Theresa was a different person to friends
than she was to family. As Kate tries to unravel these two mysteries, she becomes a
target herself. She must figure out which case her threats
are tied to if she's going to make it through alive. Clare O'Donohue also writes the Someday Quilt Mysteries but
the Kate Conway Mysteries are a bit less "cozy." However,
these books grab you and don't let go until the final
page. I can't recommend MISSING PERSONS enough! It feels as
if you're backstage at the production of a show, which is
exactly what you're doing when you read this book.
Everything ties together nicely so you're left with no loose
ends, but there are plenty of surprises along the way.
SUMMARY
The cause of death is "undetermined," but the cops peg
Chicago television producer, Kate Conway, as the main
suspect when her husband, Frank is found dead in the midst
of their most painful divorce. To make matters worse--and
weirder--Frank's girlfriend suddenly wants to be friends. Happy for the distraction, Kate throws herself into a new
work assignment: the story of Theresa Moretti, a seemingly
angelic young woman who disappeared a year earlier. All
Kate wants is a cliched story and twenty-two minutes of
footage, but when the two cases appear to overlap, Kate
needs to work fast before another body turns up -- her own.
ExcerptOne
"I want you to tell me about the day your husband was
murdered."
The woman glanced toward the camera before returning her
eyes to me. Then, in a quiet tone, she launched into the
story. It was one she must have told a hundred times in the
last three years—to police, family, friends, prosecutors,
and now, to me.
Her husband had managed one of those excessively
cheerful chain restaurants in the northwest suburbs of
Chicago. He’d recently started putting in a lot of hours
because the couple was saving for their first home and
planning a family. He’d wanted, as the woman now told me,
to give them a secure future. But it wasn’t to be. One
night, after he’d closed the restaurant and let the rest of
the employees go home, he stayed to send some e-mails to
the corporate office. While he worked, two men broke into
the restaurant, one of them an ex-employee. Fearing
identification, the men shot the husband in the face. His
last words, apparently, were, "Tell my wife I love her."
The killers were caught six hours later, having stolen only
forty dollars. The rest of the day’s take had already been
deposited at the bank by the assistant manager.
"Forty dollars," the woman repeated, still struggling to
believe that her husband had been murdered, and her future
shattered, for so paltry a sum.
She told the story beautifully, and with remarkable
composure. But as I listened, nodding my head
empathetically, my eyes glistening as if on the verge of
tears, all I could think was—this would be so much better
if she cried.
When she finished, she leaned back and looked, as they
all do, for my approval. I gave it. I was her friend, after
all. Though we’d only spoken once before today and I’d met
her only two hours ago, I was now her best friend. That was
what I needed her to feel so that she would trust me, tell
me things in confidence, forget that a cameraman and audio
guy were just a few feet away, recording everything she
said for the cable television show I worked for. Caught!
was one of dozens of true-crime shows littering up
television and yet we never ran out of new murders to
profile.
I leaned forward in my chair. We were sitting with our
knees only inches apart but I needed to get even closer to
block out everything but me.
"You did a great job with that," I said. "It was really
hard, I know, but you did better than anyone I’ve
interviewed."
I could hear the sincerity in my voice. I could imitate
sincerity so well that even I believed it. I glanced toward
the photo of her husband, strategically placed behind her
left shoulder.
"Doug was a very special man."
As they all do, she turned to see what I was looking at
and saw the photo of her husband on their wedding day. She
kept her eyes there, reluctant to turn her back on him.
"He had such wonderful dreams for you both," I
continued. "I can imagine it was something you talked about
a lot."
"It was." Her voice cracked.
"He must have wanted to give you everything."
"He did."
"I guess that’s why he was working so late."
That was it. Tears came down her face. She began to
shake. I reached over and placed my hand on hers. She
turned her eyes back to me. She was so vulnerable, in so
much pain. It would look great on camera.
I leaned back and spoke gently. "I want to go over the
last question one more time. I know this is difficult, but
tell me again about the day your husband was murdered."
She barely got through the story.
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