BOOK REVIEW: The Disappearance

Please add another author to my reading list. I just finished J.F. Freedman’s THE DISAPPEARANCE and will be hunting more books by him.

Three fourteen-year-old girls have had a busy day at the mall and during the sleepover that night, one girl thinks that she dreams that a body is being carried out of the bedroom. She goes back to sleep.The next morning their hostess Emmas can not be found.  

Emma’s family is well known in the community. Her father is the wealthy owner of the television station and her mother is active in social and charitable affairs. When Emma’s battered body is found half buried near a remote hiking trail, the town  wants nothing more than to see the guilty person executed.

Ex-prosecutor Luke Garrison is pulled out of his self inflicted exile to defend the accused man. All of the evidence points to a close family friend, popular TV anchorman Joe Allison,  and, because of the horrific circumstances, the town does not want any verdict except, “Guilty”. Luke starts to uncover the many secrets surrounding the young girl’s murder and he soon finds his own life in danger.

Freedman has given us an unlikely protagonist. Luke Garrison comes back to the town that had once seen him as a hero as a failure. His reputation as a prosecutor in the judicial community was well established, but the execution of an innocent man had caused him to leave town in disgrace and he has been living a guilt-ridden, isolated life.The story is as much about Luke’s fight with his own demons as it is about finding the murderer.

Freedman paints most of his characters with an unflattering paint brush. If Joe is innocent, he never gains our sympathies. He has too many unsavory secrets and too many lies.The characters in THE DISAPPEARANCE are very much like the rest of us, both good and bad.

Thanks to a lifetime of reading Dame Agatha, I suspected the guilty person very early in the book. Agatha Christie has taught us to suspect the least “ suspectable”. The circumstances, however, may be a surprise to you. The author builds well to the conclusion and is consistent with the clues...always an appreciated part of  any good mystery.

THE DISAPPEARANCE is a good, entertaining book. J.F. Freeman has been around for a while and, although, I am just now discovering him, I will read more.