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Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

Thriller

Missing, Presumed

by Susie Steiner

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Quick take

Every cast member is full of surprises. All of them have secrets...My suspicions kept shifting as I read.

Why I love it

A beautiful young Cambridge grad named Edith Hind, vanishes from her house on a snowy winter night, leaving behind her cell phone, her keys, her coat, a broken wine glass, and some drops of blood. Surely the culprit must be her handsome boyfriend? Or, her needy best friend? Or, the affable cold-blooded killer just out of prison? Or?

One tantalizing thing about Missing, Presumed is that the mystery feels as though it should be easy to solve. It's a hard whodunnit to puzzle out. The author embeds clues in intricate psychological portraits of each of her characters. Every cast member is full of surprises. All of them have secrets and most are characters prone to telling half-truths. My suspicions kept shifting as I read.

Our hero—the reader's best hope for a satisfying resolution to the case—is Manon, a smart, lonely, bitingly funny detective with Scotland Yard. Manon navigates the stress, bureaucracy, and cafeteria meals of her job to solve some of the agency's most vexing mysteries, and spends her free time going on terrible internet dates.

Although Edith is offstage as the plot develops, Manon's dogged and deft investigation allows us to develop a portrait of the missing woman: clever, earnest, and spoiled, a little dramatic and a little self-dramatizing, capable of immense selfishness and endearing kindness, of callousness and tremendous feeling. The characters' competing perspectives on Edith and her motives keep the story speeding forward. The many false leads along the way add to the excitement.

Ultimately, the beauty of this book is less about plot than about its insights into unexpected connections between people. Whatever resolutions the characters may find by the end of the book are not the kind they've been seeking—or the kind we're expecting.

Touches like these elevate Missing, Presumed far beyond a boilerplate police procedural into a work of art. Weeks after I finished reading I still find myself thinking—wondering—about the characters. And hoping for a sequel.

Member ratings (1,696)

Thriller
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
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Kill for Me, Kill for You
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She Started It
The Only One Left
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All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless
Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless