THE FATHER'S SON

A man investigates his father’s mysterious disappearance in a thriller spanning three decades.

The story opens in 1961 with two seemingly unrelated incidents. A con artist is spooked when he sees someone who he thought was dead at a swanky soirée, and detective Paul Locke is kidnapped as his 7-year-old son, Andrew, watches. Ten years later, Andrew is the beneficiary of a mysterious $15,000 donation for his college education; another decade passes, and Andrew is now an FBI agent, and the events of his past affect his present as he’s dispatched to get to the bottom ofa series of unsolved disappearances in New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Author McPhie does connect the threads, although it takes a good two-thirds of the novel for the story to really gain steam. A fair amount of the exposition and dialogue comes across as stilted and even clunky at times, which slows the proceedings: “Lawrence knew that the leaked information that led to Booth’s killing at the safe house had to have come from within either the Philadelphia PD or the Philadelphia FBI field office, or a spouse or close acquaintance of someone there who enticed the information.” It would have been helpful, too, if McPhie had included more backstory for his main characters. For instance, readers know that Andrew had some troubles as a young man after his father’s abduction, but they never find out exactly what they were. Nevertheless, the author clearly knows how to construct a thriller plot; the final showdown pits characters we’ve come to love against those we don’t, and the overall story will generally keep readers engaged. Although the trek takes readers down many different paths—some of which they could do without—the resolution is satisfying and even emotional.

A crime novel that feels a bit convoluted and overwritten but still manages to tell an engrossing tale.