SHAW CONNOLLY LIVES TO TELL

Beneath the deceptively lighthearted title lies a tale of grief, fear, and torment.

Shawnee Connolly has never given up on the possibility of finding her sister Theadora, who vanished after a high school party back in 2007. The rest of her family has long moved on. Eddie Connolly, an alcoholic widower who’s currently living with Shaw so she can keep an eye on him, had his daughter declared dead years ago. Madison, Shaw’s surviving sister, doesn’t have half of Shaw’s appetite for stapling up “Missing” posters all around the vicinity of Axtel, Maine. Ryan Labrecque, the future graphic designer who made Shaw miss her high school prom when he knocked her up, has left their marriage. And Shaw’s sons, Beau and Casey, just want to live their own lives. But they’re not getting constant phone calls from Anders Jansen, the one-time teacher who broadly hints that he killed Thea and doesn’t intend to stop harassing Shaw: “I am your life now.” Jansen’s campaign of terror takes its toll on Shaw’s work as a fingerprint analyst for Bennet County Forensic Solutions and frays her nerves to the breaking point. But it also moves her to call Stephen York, the latest state police detective assigned this coldest of cold cases, and beg him to reopen the investigation once more. French lays the foundation so expertly that it’s doubly disappointing when so many leads, like the fatal beating of a man whose dog has evidently been stolen, fizzle into dead ends and the solution to the mystery of Thea’s disappearance involves precious little mystery.

What lingers most in the memory is a chilling atmosphere equally shivery with cold and despair.