Just Another Missing Person

I've been meaning to read [b:Wrong Place Wrong Time|59947696|Wrong Place Wrong Time|Gillian McAllister|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659457434l/59947696.SY75.jpg|91884344]for a while, but when I saw McAllister had a new release I decided to start here.

Just Another Missing Person follows Julia, a chief detective looking for a young woman who walked down a dead end alley and never emerged.

Chapters alternate between three characters, all of whom are parents warring with the actions of their teenaged or newly adult children. Though a mystery thriller, the underlying theme really is parental love. How dangerous, preposterous choices become inevitable when you feel that protective over someone, when you love them that much.

I think the book is written well, and the audiobook is produced well. I was really liking the first 80% of the book. I was pausing the audiobook to stop and think through all these moving parts. I was stumped and also hooked. I thought this might be a rare exception to my general distaste for thrillers. But then the ending was just so....dumb. Somehow both absurd and obvious.

The biggest issue I have with the ending is not the reveal, but that I don't think the characters we are supposed to think are good, actually are good. I love characters who are morally gray and unlikeable. But Lewis was let off the hook pretty immediately for being a blackmailer. He's just a sad dad, who can blame him? If anything, everything he did was vindicated by finding Sadie alive. I suppose it would have been hypocritical of Julia to go after Lewis while committing so many crimes for her own child. But hypocrisy rarely seems to stop her. Julia and Genevieve are wholly let off the hook for killing Zach and then covering it up. This is because Lewis makes Price, poor Price, break into the prosecutor's house and threaten her with violence. Why couldn't Lewis do his unhinged idea himself? He already has the homemade balaclava. Everyone leave Price alone. I like him.Also, wasn't Lewis just working with Zach's brother to ruin Julia's life? Are we worried about Zach's brother? Poor Zach. It may be strange to feel for a mugger, but it just doesn't sit right with me for his death to be swept aside so completely, especially when almost all the characters ended up being criminals. It's like Zach's life wasn't worth anything because he was less effective than the police at crime. It is gross copaganda. Maybe it's because I just read [b:Miracle Creek|40121959|Miracle Creek|Angie Kim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537287675l/40121959._SX50_.jpg|55758063], but I would have been more swayed by the parents being willing to pay the price to protect their child, and then they ACTUALLY pay the price. Not some weird trial of faith, but rather a world where consequences move beyond the hypothetical. And, maybe, just maybe, the kids themselves could have taken some accountability. I wish there had been some reckoning, some honesty, anything other than a series of tidy coincidences where the characters we're supposed to like are bailed out. Julia doesn't even learn anything about being too invested in the job, after it threw her marriage into an awkward stalemate and threatened to imprison her daughter, after she herself narrowly escaped murder by a colleague. She's just like, “Let's get back to work. I am more dedicated than ever.”I also didn't love how Julia was surrounded with so many men and so few women of import. Art, Jonathan, Price, Lewis. For one dollar, name a woman. Other than her daughter. Other than “attractive” young blonde women who are missing and presumed dead. Please, McAllister, may I have one Bechdel test. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

For me this was a solid four stars for the first three quarters of the book. In the end it undercut itself and tied up too many things in ways that rubbed me the wrong way. Even still, I would try [b:Wrong Place Wrong Time|59947696|Wrong Place Wrong Time|Gillian McAllister|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659457434l/59947696.SY75.jpg|91884344]. Just probably not for a while.