DON'T EVER FORGET

The killing of a New York police officer during a routine traffic stop turns out to be the tip of a very cold, very massive iceberg.

Pulling over Cindy Garland for speeding, Trooper Patrick Kincaid finds blood on her hands, on her clothes, and on the lid of her car’s trunk. Before he can make her open the trunk, he’s struck down by Trevor Foster, who’s been forced to help Cindy dispose of the body in her car by the mysterious Hagen, who’s kidnapped his wife and child. This is only the latest in a rash of abductions stretching back to 1982, when Cindy’s sister, Sonia, disappeared. Since then, Bonnie Bernstein, Marcus Ruley, and Tiffany Greene have all vanished—maybe at the hands of retired schoolteacher James Darville. Now James and his visiting nurse, Rebecca Hill, are gone as well. A series of interpolated sections show present and past events from James’ point of view, but since James has Alzheimer’s, his memories are unreliable, incomplete, and riddled with gaps and fabulations, whether he’s struggling to remember things on his own or being pressed by others—a compelling metaphor for bewildered readers’ own experience. Forced into kidnapping and murder to protect their loved ones, Cindy and Trevor may only be acting out the latest stage of a series of crimes that stretches back as far as the eye can see. No wonder Investigator Susan Adler and ex­–forensics specialist Liam Dwyer are utterly overshadowed by the dark web they’re sucked into.

Long after you’ve given up ever being able to make sense of this tangle of horrors, Farrell keeps you turning the pages.