THE OUTGOING

An environmentalist writer teams up with a military friend and a private eye to reexamine a cold missing-persons case in Buhr’s mystery novel.

In the mid-2000s, middle-aged Floridian Arthur Jenkins loses Paula, his beloved wife of 10 years whom he’s known since they were tweens. After the recovering alcoholic goes on a bender, he checks himself into a detox program and then takes refuge in his home state of Michigan. There, Arthur, a magazine editor and writer who wrote a Florida-centric book on environmentalism, reconnects with his old pal, a lawyer and former U.S. Army colonel named Eddie Fletcher. Eddie invites Arthur to go fly fishing in Northern Michigan, but what Eddie truly wants is his friend’s help in investigating a cold case. A couple of decades ago, in 1984, Michigan college students Donny Massengale and Roland Parrish inexplicably vanished during a fishing trip. No sign of the two, or the red Blazer they were driving, has been found since. Eddie also brings in private investigator Zac Phoenix, who, like Eddie, has spent years working in military intelligence. They first investigate circles of stones and tracings in the dirt near where the young men vanished, as well as the equally bizarre werewolf-themed parties that took place in the area in the year or two before the disappearance. They also uncover a suspicious death that occurred around the same time that the story of the missing students broke. Before long, the trio of investigators has a handful of people to interview and a few suspects as they try to solve what’s very likely a double homicide.

The first part of Buhr’s novel offers a compelling portrayal of a man suffering a tragic loss. Many readers will relate to Arthur as he plans his late wife’s funeral while also dealing with high-maintenance in-laws. Even as the mystery takes center stage, frequent reminders of Arthur’s residual pain crop up, as when he laments such simple things as hearing Paula’s voice. Arthur, Eddie, and Zac’s pursuit of the missing-persons case is less engaging, but it’s an effective display of their dedication. Arthur, for example, painstakingly combs through microfilm of decades-old newspapers, while Zac is skilled at procuring protected information. Arthur also intriguingly questions his role in the investigation, as he’s a writer who doesn’t possess any of the impressive abilities that his military-trained comrades do. What the trio ultimately unearths pushes the story into very dark territory, and some of what they discuss is graphic. However, Buhr never lingers on the violent content, although these details are necessary to reach the truth. Arthur, who narrates, proves to be the most enjoyable character, but Eddie comes close to stealing the novel. He’s bright and compassionate, but also loud and brazen; his recent interview on TV, which he gave in Baghdad’s Green Zone, even landed him in hot water. His bluntness often results in some of the book’s best lines: “Just what kind of a bear are we poking here?”

A straightforward whodunit that gets a welcome boost from its multilayered characterization.