Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

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ashnance
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Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

Post by ashnance »

“Yet the mind must chew on something, else it will chew on itself.” Every character in Steiner’s Missing, Presumed allows their mind to “chew” on the possibilities when a successful, settled, beautiful daughter of a wealthy couple goes missing. Why is she gone? What happened to her? Is she even alive? These questions haunt both the family and the police. In a sporadic novel about love, betrayal, and crime, the family and the police alike try to find the missing girl.

Edith Hind has, on paper, the perfect life. A Cambridge graduate, living with her handsome and level-headed boyfriend, she seemingly has no problems. Until she goes missing. Between her always-near best friend, her too-perfect-to-be-real boyfriend, and her omnipotent family, little cracks in Edith’s life begin to form. With evidence to support foul play, each character assumes the worst about her disappearance.

The police are desperate. Desperate because of pressure from higher up. Desperate from the panicked Mr. Hinds. And one officer, Manon Bradshaw, is desperate to find a man to love. Bradshaw is a frustrating character. I found her difficult to take seriously as a strong police officer because of the weakness she shows in her personal life. Her utterance dependence on men to be happy with herself was rather pitiful. At the least, it prevented confidence in her role as detective.

The fact that the novel was told from multiple perspectives seemed promising. Those types of novels usually end up creating a puzzle that only falls into place as each character continually adds his or her own insight and experiences. Unfortunately, that is not how this book ended up. The multiple perspectives not only made the novel difficult to get into, but also deprived the characters of having any depth whatsoever. You could not even get into their heads enough to decide whether you liked them. Particularly with Detective Bradshaw, personal reflections on the past and thoughts on the present case were muddled to the point of the reader not knowing which was which.

With the ending this book had, the story could have been really special. Everything was tied together, and questions were mostly answered, but I missed the build-up throughout the book. Even with little information released about the characters, there was no build-up. So each discovery ended up feeling random instead of an answer to a concern the reader had.

Steiner clearly has a knack for coming up with the bones to a great story. Because her ability to present the story was not as strong, I have to rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. At times, it felt as though she was using big words for the sake of using them. By adding depth to characters and making the reader curious about a piece of information before it is revealed, Missing, Presumed could have been a great read.
Silvermoon
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Post by Silvermoon »

The premise of the book sounded fascinating. It's a shame it fell so far from the mark. Thank you for the review.
Latest Review: "The 11.05 Murders" by Brian O'Hare
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ashnance
Posts: 85
Joined: 15 Jun 2016, 14:05
Currently Reading: The Secret History
Bookshelf Size: 334
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Post by ashnance »

Silvermoon wrote:The premise of the book sounded fascinating. It's a shame it fell so far from the mark. Thank you for the review.
Yeah I was bummed that it fell short!
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