Frankie Elkin doesn’t have a home. She doesn’t have a car. She doesn’t have a husband or kids. But she does have an addiction, maybe more than one. She does have determination. And she has a gift for finding missing people. That’s what brings her to a small neighborhood in Boston filled with Haitian immigrants, to a bar called Stoney’s that has an opening for a bartender and a small apartment to let upstairs.
There is a teenage girl who is missing, and Frankie wants to find her. Angelique Badeau left school one Friday afternoon and was never seen again. The police found her backpack, her cell phone, her school clothes. Family and friends were questioned at the time. They knew of no boyfriend. She had no drug problems. She was a good kid who wanted to graduate high school and become a doctor. She wanted to help people. Angel had no reason to disappear. And yet she did.
Frankie shows up and immediately gets to work. As a white woman in a predominantly Haitian area, she stands out. She makes people nervous. But Frankie is persistent. She is honest and unrelenting and completely up front about what she’s wanting to do. She is not a cop. She’s not a journalist. She’s not a podcaster or an author or a private investigator. She doesn’t want money. She just wants to find people who are missing. People whose cases have gone cold. People who have been all but forgotten. She’s already found 14. She just hasn’t found any who were still alive.
As Frankie starts asking questions, she finds herself making friends . . . and making people nervous. She quickly meets the police officer who works as a liaison officer to the neighborhood and then the lead detective. She talks to the family, asks questions that no one else has thought to ask. She traces Angel’s steps and talks to her friends. She gets coffee and directions through the confusing streets of Boston at the local Dunkin Doughnuts. She tries the local foods. She goes to AA meetings. She finds her way into the trust of Angel’s brother, of the locals at Stoney’s, of Stoney’s cat Piper, of the police.
But there is someone out there who knows what happened to Angelique. Because they are what happened to her. And they will do anything to keep from revealing what they know. Will Frankie be ready for them when she finally finds them? Will they be ready for her?
Master of thrillers Lisa Gardner has gifted us Before She Disappeared, a taut narrative of missing persons and the woman obsessed with finding them. The characters spring to life from the page, their pain and struggles, their celebrations, their meals, their fears, their purring all breathe a realism to this story that is hard to resist and harder to walk away from. You will be sucked in and, like someone sleeping under a cat, you will not be able to leave until you get to the end.
I am a victim of Before She Disappeared. I started it and couldn’t set it aside until I found out what happened to these people. Even now, that I’ve reached the end of the book, I know that these characters will say with me and feel more real than some of the people I see in real life. The layers of the story are gripping, the setting is interesting, but those characters are so nuanced that they will live on in my memory, and maybe in my dreams. If you want to be haunted by a book, then this is the book you need to read. Don’t expect less from this one.
Egalleys for Before She Disappeared were provided by Penguin (Dutton) through NetGalley, with many thanks.
