Jane Casey - The Missing

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and enjoyable

I enjoyed this book very much. It is an extremely well-written crime novel, concerning the murder of a young girl and its effect on those involved. It is told in the first person by a young woman who is the English teacher of the murdered girl and whose own brother went missing and never returned when she was six years old. The intertwining and playing out of the two stories is very skilfully handled and made for a very gripping narrative.

Jane Casey writes in an unaffected style which is easy to read and carries you along very nicely. She doesn't employ overblown stylistic tricks and really gives the sense that it is being related by an ordinary, literate and unpretentious young woman. The characters are convincing and very well drawn (one of the book's great strengths) and they generally act very credibly rather than doing implausible things for the sake of the plot. I found myself utterly immersed while reading and kept wanting to go back and read more.

The plot itself is quite believable, right up to the final pages. The tension builds very satisfactorily - largely psychologically rather than resorting to violence or gruesomeness, which again I thought was a real strength. The only reason I couldn't give this book five stars is the ending. The apparently obligatory Cornered Killer Climax rather let the book down, and I think it would have been far more effective if it had ended more rationally and about thirty pages earlier.

That aside, I thought this an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a literate and exiting read. I shall certainly look out for Ms Casey's next book, and I hope this is the beginning of a long and successful career for her.