The Missing Ones

June 15, 2019
A Boston area librarian's love for her best friend's child holds out the best hope for sustaining her otherwise disastrous life. Hester Thursby lives with her veterinarian boyfriend, Morgan, and Kate, his twin sister Daphne's child. Every day, Hester pretends to drop Kate at school on the way to her job at Harvard University, but it's been a month since she's done either. After almost dying while using her research skills to find a missing person (Little Comfort, 2018), she's become unnaturally fearful about Kate's safety since Daphne, her closest friend, walked out of their lives. Meanwhile, a group of friends on a Maine island are dealing with a love triangle, missing children, and drugs. Luckless Finisterre Island police officer Rory Dunbar is in love with his childhood friend, Lydia, whose husband, a state cop, is unfaithful and possibly crooked. Added to that dynamic is Annie, Daphne's alter ego, who's squatting in a deserted Victorian house beloved of drug addicts and other lost souls. Lydia's son, Oliver, disappears, and after Rory finds him asleep on a boat, a whispering campaign claims that he took the boy himself so he could play the hero. Next to go missing just as a powerful storm arrives is Ethan, the 4-year-old son of drug addict Frankie Sullivan. When Lydia and her friend and lover, Vaughn Roberts, are swept into a raging ravine while searching for Ethan, Annie volunteers to be lowered on a rope to help save them. Overwhelmed by events, Annie texts Hester, who leaves with Kate for Finisterre, where Daphne's nowhere to be found. Hester, uncertain whom to trust, risks her relationship and her life as her search for Daphne uncovers dangerous secrets. A conflicted protagonist battles formidable opponents in a bid for a normal life.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 15, 2019
Hill’s intense second Hester Thursby mystery finds Harvard librarian Hester, still traumatized from her experiences in 2018’s Little Comfort, doing the best she can to raise the abandoned four-year-old daughter of her boyfriend’s sister, Daphne, who’s also Hester’s best college friend, in Somerville, Mass. Meanwhile, itinerant Annie has been squatting for months with junkies in an old Victorian house on Little Finisterre Island, Maine. In a small community with long-held secrets and low tolerance for outsiders, Annie feels threatened. Her worries increase as a storm approaches during a search for a missing child. A major reveal well into the book leads to Hester’s traveling to Maine to help Annie. Fans of Little Comfort will enjoy the resolution of open threads in Hester’s personal story, but the chaos in Annie’s world and everyone pulled into it holds the key to the novel’s satisfying tension. Hill is adept at building compassion for his characters in a tight-knit social web while implicating them in dark thoughts and actions. He remains a writer to watch. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from August 1, 2019

Almost a year ago, while working her side job searching for lost and missing people, Hester became the victim of violent crime, and she's still having trouble dealing with the emotional aftermath. Hester's best friend, Daphne, twin of Hester's boyfriend Morgan, was another survivor but quickly disappeared without explanation, leaving Kate, her four-year-old daughter, in the care of her brother and best friend. When Daphne sends a text from Finisterre Island, a small island off the coast of Maine, Hester is on her way from her home in Somerville within hours. Each chapter moves at a good pace while still allowing for the characters and plot to develop, sometimes even dropping in false leads and touching on serious social issues. VERDICT This second book in the "Hester Thursby" series (following Little Comfort) can be read and enjoyed on its own, but that would mean missing out on time with Hester. Addressing the impact of illegal drug dealing and use, this whodunit has broken family dynamics and a wonderfully complex and intricate mystery, plenty to engage readers looking for a new amateur detective to follow.--Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
Harvard librarian Hester Thursby returns for a second complex thriller that takes her to a remote island off the coast of Maine after she receives a cryptic text from her missing friend, Daphne. After a recent case (Little Comfort, 2018) left her traumatized, Hester has abandoned her sideline of tracing missing people who don't necessarily want to be found and finds that looking after Daphne's four-year-old daughter provides enough of a challenge. She arrives on Finisterre immediately after a devastating hurricane has complicated an already dangerous situation involving missing children. Despite the presence of a librarian detective, this should not be mistaken for a cozy bibliomystery. It is dark, sometimes downright creepy, with a profusion of deeply conflicted characters. Hard-core fans of the genre will appreciate the twist at the ending, where the ending promises (threatens?) another unfortunate beginning.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)