A
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
There’s been a trend in mystery fiction lately of deliciously twisty psychological thrillers featuring women in roles that mysteries don’t usually afford them. I’ve talked about it before, The Gone Girl effect, and how these thrillers that set up a traditional mystery scenario. A woman (usually respectable and middle class) is missing or dead. We presume she is the victim. Then the author takes all our usual assumptions shakes them up in a Yatzee cup, hits us in the face with them, and then tosses them out the window.
Sometimes the women in these books are a victim; sometimes they’re the killer. Sometimes they’re both. But they are always nuanced, complicated characters who refuse to be reduced to a pretty face on a reward poster. They can be cunning, manipulative, evil, mentally ill or just plain badass. They are never reliable as narrators.
This is a trend I am 1000% here for and All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda is a wonderful addition to this new subgenre insuspense fiction.
The book opens with Nicolette Farrell coming back home to small town Cooley Ridge in order to pack up her father’s house. Her father has dementia and is in a nursing home, and Nic and her brother Daniel need to sell his house in order to pay for his care. After she turned eighteen Nic ghosted on her friends and boyfriend, Tyler, and left Cooley Ridge amid a cloud of suspicion. One of her friends, Corinne Prescott, disappeared and the rumors and allegations nearly tore the town apart. Corinne was last seen at a fair with Nic, Tyler, and Daniel, making them prime suspects.
Now it’s ten years later, and Corinne still hasn’t been found. Nic’s father, in and out of lucidity, starts talking, telling people he knows what happened to that girl. It starts the suspicion dust-storm up again and then another woman, Annaliese, goes missing–the woman who was Nic, Daniel and Tyler’s alibi that day, ten years ago.
I can’t tell you much more about the plot because I’d be giving too much away. The premise above is enough to make me grab for the book, but All the Missing Girls is so, so much more.
For one thing, the author employs an interesting strategy of telling the story backwards. We start with day 14 after Annaliese goes missing, the next chapter is day 13, etc. So the crisis point of the book is actually the day of the disappearance. As the narrative unfolds the reader understands that something cataclysmic happened the day Annaliese vanished, but we don’t know what. We’re left to weave in loose ends–off the cuff remarks from other characters, suspicions, gossip, and Nic’s actions which make little sense. Nic is sleep deprived, not eating, struggling to navigate in a community where she’s under everyone’s watchful eye. As she tells us the story of the past, of the day Corinne vanished, we also start uncovering snippets of the present day mystery.
At first I wasn’t sure the “telling the story backwards” thing made a ton of sense, but then as the mystery unraveled I realized how beautifully it worked. When I finished the book I was left with an OMG moment where everything fell into place perfectly.
It used to be that, hard boiled female detectives and/or Stephanie Plum aside, there weren’t a lot of women in suspense books that weren’t fridged for the purpose of driving the hero. In All the Missing Girls, women still feature heavily as the victim and/or launching point for the story, but they occupy a central focus that’s far more complicated than “dead girl.”
One of the things this book does beautifully is lend detail to the lives of the victims, especially Corinne. At eighteen she was a complicated, troubled young woman who was at once charismatic and compulsively likeable, but also mean. I’ve known people like this. I’ve had that friend, the one you’re waiting to turn on you. Corinne’s personality left some people whispering that she did something to deserve her unknown fate. But Nic knows that Corinne was also
Corinne isn’t just a pretty face on a missing poster. She’s not the impetus for some FBI agent with a heart full of whiskey and brokenness and country songs to find his mojo again. She’s not an angel. She’s an actual human being. And I love that SO FUCKING MUCH.
So basically this book scores points in several categories:
- It’s a really well-told, well-plotted mystery
- It actually portrays female characters, especially victims, as real, fully-developed human beings
- It has a female narrator who is at once untrustworthy and also relatable
- I didn’t see the end coming
If you like mysteries or thrillers or suspenseful books–you’ll love this book. Skip the library. Buy it now. I told your credit card it’s okay. If you’re intrigued but easily creeped out, I think it’s still okay. There’s no gore here and it’s not a BOO! I jumped out of the closet and scared you mystery, it’s more of a “I don’t know who to trust here” mystery. There are no real scary parts, just ah-ha! and OMG parts.
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda is a standout debut thriller and example of female crime writing that I want more of, goddamnit.
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Ugh, being fifth in line on the waitlist for a copy from the library, or buying it for $13. These dilemmas plague me.
I’ve been in a reading slump for the past month, this sounds like a book that could break me out of it though, so I think I’ll end up buying it!
@Allie: I’m with you, number 8 on the waiting list here.
OT: The book sounds great, but is anyone else bothered by all the “girl” titles we’re seeing? I get it, marketing, best sellers, etc. If you substitute “woman,” there is no real change, imo, in the intent of the book. OTOH, if you substitute “boy,” now we’ve introduced “child” into the conversation and one has to think about what we’re doing with the use of “girl.” Why “girl” is acceptable and we don’t talk about, afaik, the lack of agency this appellation represents.
This has been on my mind a lot lately and it won’t let go. Am I overthinking it?
I really like being warned about the scariness of any particular book. That last paragraph tipped me over into maybe being willing to read this.
I don’t think this is actually a debut? Maybe her first book targeted at adults, as her prior fiction seems to be more in the YA thriller genre.
@Darlynne, I agree completely and have wondered the same thing.
@Darlynne
Right??? I agree wholeheartedly. I read an article (on washington post or new yorker, cant remember) about the new rise in psychological thrilling “GIRLS” and though I do enjoy the rise in Gone-Girl like thrillers, the title really irks me. I thought that “The Girl on The Train” was about a little kid because the title says “Girl” on it! Girl denotes child. Most of these characters are women! Words and Language *mean things*.
That aside, I’m totally reading this book. Sounds wonderful.
@Darlynne I was literally just saying this to my husband! Girls are children! Boys are children!
Count me on the bandwagon that girls are children.
I got an arc of this book, and stayed up till 2 am to finish it. Out of all the gone girl type books, this is by far my favorite.
Once you get used to the backwards style, you will need to finish it in one sitting.
I think all the “girl” titles are about two things 1. a callback to Gone Girl (great alliteration) because it sold so well and 2. “Girl” has a connotation of innocence which works well with the mystery element.
But yeah girls = kids in my book too, usually.
There have been quite a few good thrillers written by women with complex female characters long before Gone Girl. I feel that saying this is a new thing is a bit of an oversight. Laura Lippma, Karin Slaughter, are just a couple of writers that have been writing good suspense novels for years.
I thought it was just okay. The first 2/3’s of the book was very slow. The characters were two dimensional, and I felt like it was more of a romantic thriller aimed at high school or college age people. I wish I had checked it out from the library rather than spending the money on it.