{"id":11185,"date":"2024-09-16T07:50:48","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11185"},"modified":"2024-09-16T19:04:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T23:04:40","slug":"the-missing-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11185","title":{"rendered":"The Missing Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Missing Family<\/a><\/em> is the latest in Tim Weaver\u2019s popular series of thrillers featuring missing-persons investigator David Raker. Here, Weaver presents an impossible crime, the unexpected tentacles of which stretch clear from England across the Atlantic to the North American continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Fowler hires Raker to solve the mysterious disappearance of her family a year earlier. After a day at a favorite Dartmoor lake, her husband, teenage son, and his girlfriend row the family\u2019s twenty-foot dinghy out onto the water one last time. Drowsy from the sun, Sarah briefly falls asleep\u2014her wristwatch confirms she napped for no more than a minute or two\u2014until her toddler, Mable, awakens her. Halfway across the lake, the dinghy bobs, empty. The police are baffled. The boat\u2019s too far out for the trio to have swum to shore in the available time, not to mention the girlfriend\u2019s arm was in a cast. They find no evidence of violence and have no witnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t stay with the grieving Sarah long, though. In Los Angeles, detectives from two different departments\u2014eventually three jurisdictions\u2014are baffled by a trio of shootings. Five bodies, killed by bullets typically used in hunting rifles, are found in remote areas. Far apart, there\u2019s nothing to link them, and they continue for years as separate cold cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In yet a third plotline, at a massive London-area casino resort, the Skyline, a high-rolling gambler and casino investor is viciously stabbed to death. He and the two brothers who own the casino have been best friends for years. Despite the owners\u2019 determination to find the murderer, security camera footage of the victim in the frequent company of another man is notably\u2014possibly suspiciously\u2014uninformative. Who was this stranger?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brothers also own the world\u2019s largest casino, The Afrique, in Las Vegas. (Coincidentally, I was at a conference in Las Vegas while reading this book, which was almost too much verisimilitude!) Weaver certainly captures the over-the-top, mildly uneasy, anything-can-happen casino buzz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The suspected murderer returns to the Skyline, is identified (facial recognition software at work), detained, and put in one of the casino\u2019s secure holding cells under guard. When the police arrive to arrest him, the locked cell is empty. It\u2019s another missing person case, which cries out for Raker\u2019s assistance. Raker\u2019s investigations\u2014the missing family and the casino murder and disappearance\u2014work in tandem, while you learn about the West Coast murders through the eyes of the California detectives. A lot is going on. You may suspect that all three plot lines will eventually weave together, but how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the plot is complex, Weaver\u2019s chapters are short and keep things moving. Sometimes he tries a little too hard to end each chapter with a startling revelation, just before the next chapter switches to another plot. That said, you\u2019ll encounter quite a few nifty surprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is written in both first-person (the Raker chapters) and third-person (all the others), which effectively provides immediacy from the lead detective, plus the differing points of view and voices of other characters. It\u2019s never confusing. Overall, an entertaining puzzle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order here from Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Missing Family is the latest in Tim Weaver\u2019s popular series of thrillers featuring missing-persons investigator David Raker. Here, Weaver presents an impossible crime, the unexpected tentacles of which stretch clear from England across the Atlantic to the North American … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Three sets of crimes weave together in a thrilling tale of revenge and deception. New from Tim Weaver.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,40,126,32],"tags":[2166,519,388,2221,678,415],"class_list":["post-11185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-detective","tag-england","tag-las-vegas","tag-missing-persons","tag-murder","tag-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Up","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11186,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11185\/revisions\/11186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}