Local Woman Missing is a twisty mystery that’s also rather sad. It flips back and forth between two time periods: 11 years ago, Shelby Tebow goes for a run and never comes home. Shortly after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter Delilah also disappear. Fast forward to the present day, and Delilah is back. She’s spent the last decade in a pitch-black basement, barely cared for by a cruel and abusive couple, and her return sparks renewed interest in the events of the past.

There are quite a few potential suspects behind the disappearance, and a whole bunch of intriguing clues like a professional connection between Shelby and Meredith, and a series of threatening text messages sent to Meredith’s phone.

I didn’t guess the big reveal at all, which is testament to Kubica’s skill at giving us some truly viable red herrings. But more than that, I admire how Kubica presented the big reveal — the author used the perspective of one of the other characters to frame the villain in an almost sympathetic light. There is a lot of imagery of the villain being like a cornered animal, frightened out of their wits, and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. So while their actions are, by all measures, horrible, Kubica’s treatment made me feel mostly just sad that they felt the need to do all that at all.

That being said, near the end of the book, the villain admits they “fucked up” and “never meant to hurt anyone,” and another character shoots back, “You hurt everyone.” (emphasis in the original) And it’s true. No matter how sympathetic Kubica makes the villain, the author also succeeds at taking us into the hearts of other characters, mostly the narrators (Shelby, Meredith, Delilah, Meredith’s son / Delilah’s brother Leo, and their neighbour Kate), but also their loved ones. I love how Kubica uses Leo’s perspective to show us how hard the years have been on his father Josh, and how much her captivity has impacted Delilah. Leo shares his mother’s empathy and intuition, and both his and Meredith’s chapters are especially revealing of the other characters.

Overall, a twisty and gripping mystery. TW for child abuse, as there are scenes of Delilah’s captivity and even after she’s rescued, there are some heart breaking moments where Leo tries to help her cope with her newfound freedom.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a ride! Find You First is a high-octane, multi-faceted, full-throttle chase: a tech millionaire wants to track down his biological children to give them important health news and part of his fortune, but someone else wants to find them first, kill them, and make any physical trace of them disappear completely. Barclay keeps probably a dozen narrative balls up in the air the entire time. There was so much going on, and so many potential ways the story could go, and the entire time, you just knew it was all going to come together spectacularly in the end.

Barclay did a good job at keeping me off-balance when it came to the mystery. For most of the book, I was sure I knew who the bad guy was, and I was confident that I had a handle on their motivation. The suspect I had in mind wasn’t the obvious baddie, and while their methods were horrible, the motivation I thought they had made them actually kinda sympathetic.

I was wrong. (My suspect turned out to be shady in other ways, so I’m still pretty proud of myself for sussing that out, but they were not behind the killings.) It took me a long time to even begin to suspect the actual bad guy, and their motivation turned out to be messed up far beyond what I ever expected.

Some of the events in the final few scenes did stretch credulity. I can imagine they’d be pretty awesome to watch onscreen, but on the page, they did require quite a bit of suspending disbelief. Still, by that point, I didn’t care how unrealistic some of the logistical details were; I was fully hooked. I started this book sympathetic to Miles (the tech millionaire) and mildly curious about what was going to happen, but by the final 25% or so, I was speed-reading through the e-galley, and felt almost breathless by the time I was done.

It’s such a fun, entertaining read, and the moments between Miles and Chloe, the first child he tracks down, are both funny and heartwarming.

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Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti mysteries have long been a go-to comfort series for me. I love the gentlemanly, sophisticated Guido, his loving wife Paola and her delicious home-cooked meals, his sharp mentee Signorina Elettra, and of course, his beautifully rich and vibrant world of Venice. Transient Desires struck me as a rather bleak addition to the series, though I admit I don’t know if that impression is due to the novel itself or to the overall bleakness of pandemic times.

In some ways, Transient Desires has many of the hallmarks of classic Brunetti mysteries. There’s the beginning of a relatively minor mystery (two young women, American tourists, are left with severe injuries at the entrance to an island hospital), which expands into a much broader treatise on social ills. One of the suspects, a young man seen with the tourists earlier than evening, is the son of a wealthy, powerful man, which means Brunetti needs to navigate the politics of social classes. The case also leads him to uncover a sex trafficking operation, and to work with a young man afraid of violence if his family learn of his sexuality. All of these are deeper social issues that entangle Brunetti and his colleagues, and, like other Brunetti mysteries, takes this story far beyond the question of the two initial victims.

There is also the usual wonderful deep dive into Venice and its various subcultures. There’s a thought-provoking scene where one of Brunetti’s colleagues, a senior detective, deliberately slips into her childhood accent to disarm a suspect, and make the suspect underestimate her intelligence. Brunetti himself, socially aware as he is, falls into the same trap, and, upon realizing his colleague’s roots, notes his own surprise at how ‘far’ she’s come. The detective notices Brunetti’s response, and calls him out on his deeply rooted prejudices, and this leads to a gratifying teachable moment for the commissario, as well as a fascinating glimpse into Venetian culture.

I think for me, the sense of bleakness comes mostly in the scenes featuring Brunetti’s family. I usually look forward to those scenes as little respites of joy, lightness, and love in the midst of all the mess the commissario has to deal with on a daily basis. But time passes in the Brunetti-verse, and the characters age as well. There’s still the old touches of lightness, as when Brunetti despairs of having to eat a takeout sandwich for lunch instead of Paola’s home cooking, and there’s still plenty of love and respect around the Brunetti family table. But daughter Chiara is a bit of a self-righteous teen now, who guilts her family for eating meat, and in one rather spoiled-brat moment, complains that her school is treating its students like slaves by not allowing them their phones in the classroom. The thoughtless comment leads to a teachable moment from Brunetti, who has his sex trafficking case in mind, and Chiara responds with rueful, self-aware wit that keeps things light and acknowledges her self-awareness without quite admitting her fault. Still, the remark in the first place seemed rather out of place — even taking into account teenagers’ exaggerations, it seems unlikely that a teen as socially aware as Chiara would refer to slavery so thoughtlessly, and so the scene seemed set up mostly for a link to Brunetti’s case, and cast a rather somber tone on an otherwise joyful family time.

More organic and yet also more somber is a scene when Paola asks Guido how he can stand to do his job with all the emotions it entails. He admits that it’s all he’s qualified for, which can be taken as a lighthearted deflection, but I can’t help reading some weariness into the reply. The conversation proceeds to a comment from Guido about his eventual retirement dream of a quiet life in the country, and Paola’s surprise at the admission. The conversation is brief, and relatively light, but there’s a sense of melancholy to it as well, and I can’t help wondering the mental and emotional toll all the years of Guido’s career has taken on him. This Guido is older than I remember, and more weighed down by his years of difficult work.

The mystery itself ends rather abruptly, with a bit of an action-packed final scene. The final paragraphs refer to other parties taking over the situation, and giving Guido a break, but the final line implies the events of the scene will cast a long shadow for Guido, and add to the weight already heavy on his shoulders.

Transient Desires is a beautiful, atmospheric read. It’s a bit slow at times, but as Leon’s readers have come to expect, it’s full of heart, and vibrant with the world of Venice. It’s also, to me at least, a somber reminder of the toll a job like Guido’s can take on someone, especially after so many years (30 books and counting!) of trying to navigate a complex, and increasingly messy, world.

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Thank you to Publisher’s Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.