NO PLACE TO RUN

The siblings of two young people gone missing in the Pacific Northwest join forces to track them down.

In the two years since 15-year-old Scarlett Faith disappeared, the police and even her older brother, Seattle coder Aidan Faith, have pretty much given up on finding her. Then, suddenly, a train passenger’s fleeting sight of a woman who looks just like Scarlett fleeing through the wilderness gives Aidan new hope and new energy. His visit to Eaglewood, near where his sister was spotted, produces nothing from local Sgt. Giglio, Mayor Christopher Hood, or Cody, the mayor’s thuggish fixer. But it does bring Aidan together with Lana Carrera, a graduate student seeking her vanished brother, Samuel, whom the authorities have assumed to be dead ever since his cellphone was found in the ruins of a forest fire. With no one to rely on but each other, the pair quickly bond as they discover traces of other missing persons and two neighboring groups the story has already provided glimpses into: Darryl Moses’ Sugar Magnolia Farm, whose economy depends on marijuana and prostitution, and the Cradle, whose eco-terrorist leader, Shannon Reinhardt, is running an even more radical operation. Unlike the searchers, the local countercultures share a relationship that’s purely transactional, and it’s not surprising that Edwards peppers the story with a high body count, including a surprising number of victims shot dead by the good guys, who seem just fine about it in the moment and even finer afterward.

A so-so thriller whose premise and events are at once unnerving and deeply familiar.