Customer Reviews

The Disappeared: A Novel (Jenny Cooper)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I sort of had to force myself to finish this one. There wasn't anything wrong with the writing, or the subject matter, and I think that given a different main character the book would have been interesting simply because it introduces the US reader to the way a coroner functions in Great Britain, which is very different from what we are familiar with. But even that made me feel a bit removed from this as a work of fiction. While it was informative, I couldn't get too involved in the mystery without being able to understand Coroner Cooper's duties and anticipate the significance of the clues she unearthed and what she would be able to do with them, or not. It was a bit frustrating.

And speaking of Coroner Jenny Cooper: I absolutely could not like that woman. She was weak and self absorbed and so lacking in judgment and confidence (and maternal instinct) that I actively disliked her. She was popping pills every time she encountered the slightest rough patch, was digging up and beating herself over the head with old relationships, letting her son down again and again (although he was nearly as unpleasant as she) and using authority in the place of wisdom. As I said, if there had been a different main character it could have made all the difference. Jenny Cooper would have to undergo a major personality conversion for me to want to spend more time with her, so I can truthfully say I wouldn't go out of my way to get the next Jenny Cooper installment.

First Sentence: During her six months as coroner for the Severn Vale District, Jenny Cooper had known only a handful of corpses remain unidentified for more than a day or two.

Coroner Jenny Cooper is contacted by the mother of a British Muslim student for a formal inquest on her son. He, and his friend, both disappeared from their college dorm rooms seven years' ago. The authorities claim they went to Afghanistan for terrorist training and failed to do a thorough investigation. Jenny also has a unidentified Jane Doe in the morgue whose body is stolen but traces of radioactivity left behind. How are the two cases linked and why are the authorities trying so hard to suppress the inquest?

It is very difficult when you really like an author's first book, yet find their second book so disappointing. What worked well in Hall's first book, "The Coroner," seemed to come completely undone here.

The protagonist, Jenny Cooper, moved from being a woman finding strength in spite of her issues, to an insipid, woman influenced and overwhelmed by everyone; her son, her clerk, her sometimes boyfriend, the police and some rather mysterious lawyer. Rather than being sympathetic, I found her annoying. At times, disability notwithstanding, her behavior was so unconscionable it wasn't even excusable by being fictional.

None of the characters were fully developed. Worse yet, I found I didn't care about or feel connected to any of them. The only exception was the boy's mother, Mrs. Jamal, and she was poorly used by the story.

There was a sense of place but not strong enough to give me a visual sense of where the story occurred. The author does have a good ear for dialogue but that's rather damning with faint praise.

The plot seemed to plod on with little sense of tension or suspense. Even the courtroom scenes, so effectively done in her first book, lacked punch or luster. The whole thing felt as though it was a collection news-story ideas (Muslim's, terrorists, conspiracies) looking for a cohesive book plot.

The deal-breaker, for me, was the particularly annoying "you'll have to read-the-next-book" ending. More than one author has lost me for doing that and Mr. Hall may well be the newest on that list.

The book just doesn't ever quite work. I did read it all the way through and I don't mean to say it was absolutely awful; but it wasn't good either. I shall have to give serious thought as to whether I continue reading this series.

THE DISAPPEARED (Lic Invest-Jenny Cooper-England-Cont) - Poor
Hall, M.R. - 2nd in series
Macmillan, ©2010, UK Hardcover - ISBN: 9780230709850

Generally I am very fond of mysteries that feature complicated lead characters and an even more complicated plot. Both work when they are well-developed. This novel left me wanting in both regards and took real effort to finish. The main character, Jenny Cooper, is a truly troubled character, and we find out from the onset that she has some serious issues to deal with that lie deeply buried in her past, but aside from the occasional innuendo, her pill-popping and visits to her psychiatrist, we do not really get closer to understanding her. The relationship with her son is fraught with unresolved conflict as well, and if that were not enough, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with a neighbor. All of that, though, is only the backdrop to a case that develops like a box of a 100 pieces that have been spilled all over the place. When Jenny in her function as a coroner is pleaded upon by the mother of a young man who has disappeared in 2002, she reluctantly opens an inquest. The story has real potential and there are some interesting characters moving in an out of it, but the author is never really able to develop that arc of suspense that would have you glued to the book. Mr Hall shows his professional background as a lawyer clearly in the courtroom descriptions and altercations, here his narrative is on terra firma, but the rest of the novel is uneven, especially in terms of plot development and ends with a shock revelation about Jenny that comes across as a heavy-handed cliff-hanger for the next installment in this series.

"The Disappeared" was a great crime novel, as long as I pretended to myself that the heroine, Jenny Cooper, was a detective and not a coroner. I gather that the function of a coroner in England is not exactly the same as in the U.S.; I was puzzled by the way that Cooper, a coroner, was investigating the disappearance rather than the police. In any event, Cooper is a coroner and investigates the disappearance, several years previously, of two young Muslim men. She soon finds herself being pressured through both official and unofficial channels to drop the investigation. In the manner of all fictional detectives, however, the more she is pressured the more stubborn she becomes.
Cooper's personal life weaves through the narrative. She is seeing a therapist and taking anti-depressants. She complains that the anti-depressants dull her affect and her thinking, and uses that as an excuse to stop taking them, which in turn makes her weepy and nutty at the same time. Although I am not an authority on the subject, these sections seemed unrealistic to me. I have been on anti-depressants, and my experience is nothing at all like Cooper's purported experience.
The scenes of Cooper's personal life also alerted me to the fact that there is a previous book. Although the plots do not intersect, I assume that familiarity with the previous book ("The Coroner") would explain some of Cooper's instability, which is not explained to the new reader.
As the story moves forward, Cooper speaks to the parents of a young woman who went missing recently, and although she seems to have no connection whatsoever to the missing Muslim men, the author gradually brings the plot pieces together in a complex and satisfying way. I recommend "The Disappearance" highly to fans of crime novels who enjoy a well-crafted story that is not all guns and chase scenes.

The unavoidable comparisons to Cromwell will begin no doubt. And while I've always enjoyed Patricia I also always found her characters and approach a little cold. Not resonating with human caring that transcended the clinical eye she applies to all murders (and yes I know we're talking pathologist here) but Jenny Cooper more than makes up for all that was missing in the Scarpetta stories. Maybe it's just me and everybody will pooh pooh my comments but I loved Jenny for her weaknesses more than her strenghts. M.R. Hall has a winner here and I'm looking forward to many more stories to dissect.

Jenny Cooper is called upon as a coroner to determine whether or not two Muslim college students who disappeared should be declared legally dead. The mother of one of the young men pleads with Jenny to investigate their deaths, as she is convinced that her son did not flea the country to train as a terrorist, rather she is convinced that foul play was involved in their disappearance.

The description on the dust jacket of this book is deceiving, in that this is not a thriller; readers expecting a Patricia Cornwell-like read will be disappointed. Instead, it is a competent mystery and courtroom drama, since apparently coroners in the UK are allowed to conduct investigations and even hearings in front of juries. Though the story plodded along at times, overall it was an enjoyable read in that it touches on current topics such as racism, the war on terror, and international relations. These things should be enough to interest an American audience, it is unfortunate that the book synopsis is somewhat misleading.

Jenny Cooper, Bristol's new coroner, has a body she can't identify, an office in upheaval, and a grieving mother demanding answers. But when she begins poking around, a regular inquest into the fate of two missing Muslim boys turns into a national security crisis, and Jenny finds herself in the eye of the kind of storm a regular British civil servant should never endure.

This book's dust flap copy compares this first novel in a new series to Patricia Cornwell, but I almost see more Ian Rankin in this multi-layered tale of crime, deception, and duplicity. M.R. Hall creates a character of great complexity in Jenny Cooper, and thrusts her into the kind of circumstance all loyal desk workers secretly dread. And just when she thinks she's figured everything out, she discovers another secret in this layer cake of deceit.

Jenny Cooper is damaged goods, struggling to keep herself and her life together. When her job makes excruciatingly unreasonable demands of her, she responds with great aplomb, but the moment things lighten up, her anxieties leave her doubled over in agony. But the need to return a verdict on the missing boys doesn't relieve her of a troubled teenage son, a tempestuous love life, her fragile mental state, or personal secrets waiting to emerge.

The ending is a bit of a let-down. The narration admits that the story has ramped expectations up so high, the resolution is somewhat anticlimactic. Still, getting to that resolution brings readers through such twists and turns, ramping up such exquisite tension, that most readers will probably forgive that disappointing ending. After all, we read mysteries for their spine-tingling middles, not the inevitably prosaic ends.

M.R. Hall introduces a heroine and a setting rife with potential in future novels. Though neither revolutionary nor ground-breaking, this novel packs the kind of juicy dread that mystery readers thrive on. There's enough in here to whet your appetite and keep you coming back for more.

After six months on the job as the Severn Vale District coroner, Jenny Cooper concludes that very few corpses remain unidentified after forty-eighth hours in the morgue. Although she is working on a Jane Doe that has been their guest for over a week, her prime assignment is to decide whether two alleged radical Muslim college students Nazim Jamal and Rafti Hassam, who vanished seven years ago are dead.

Her pre-inquest begins with Nazim's grieving hysterical mother Mrs. Jamal begging Jenny to provide closure for her. The authorities involved in the case insist the two young friends traveled to the Middle East to join one of the Islamic extremist groups that operate on both sides of the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Finding irregularities in the police report, she thinks the duo never left England though the pair obviously had ties with a radical Islam group. Jenny convenes an inquest in which neither the cops nor MI5 and CIA operatives cooperate; in fact they go way beyond just stonewalling her, which leads her to wonder what they are concealing. When Mrs. Hazim dies suddenly and the Jane Doe body vanishes, she wonders what she has wrought even while struggling with a divorce, her cantankerous teenage son, and her relationship with disbarred lawyer Alec MacAvoy.

This exciting story line contains a strong inquest that with each clue expands in scope, but the plot is owned by the coroner who suffers from anxiety disorder and addictions caused by her mental illness. Ironically other characters are friendlier and much more charming, but readers will feel empathy only for the heroine and surviving relatives of the deceased. The Disappeared is a terrific coroner's inquest that at times reads like an espionage thriller as M. R. Hall provides a strong investigation.

Harriet Klausner

This Disappeared, M. R. Hall's debut novel, is a present day mystery set in Bristol, England. The central character is coroner Jenny Cooper who is conducting an inquiry into the possible death of a suspected young radical Muslim, Nazim Jamal. Jamal's mother has worked the British system in an attempt to find out what happened to her son. He vanished years ago, and sufficient time has passed to have him declared dead. Mrs. Jamal is unsatisfied with the investigation conducted by the Bristol Police and the Security Services (MI5), and she sees this as her last attempt to reach closure as to what happened to her son. The story that unfolds will hold the interest of mystery readers who love conspiracy theories.

At 399 pages Hall delivers no fluff. Readers get to know Jenny both professionally as the coroner and personally as a divorced mother of a teenage son. She also battles anxiety/panic attacks, and she sees a therapist to help her cope with her struggles. Her personal life is a messy and complicated as the mystery that she works to solve. I thought that Jenny's struggles in her personal life made her more appealing as a character rather than some overinflated, perfect heroine.

Hall does a good job with the other characters as well. Alec McAvoy is the other character who is as complicated as Jenny. He was a criminal/personal lawyer whom Mrs. Jamal had enlisted when her son originally disappeared. However, he has since been in prison and exhibits erratic behavior that leaves questions as to what side he is really on. The interplay between McAvoy and Jenny is one of the driving forces behind the story.

As for the story itself, it moves along nicely without feeling rushed. As with most mystery novels, there are points where Hall stretches reality to its limits. However, most readers of this genre expect some degree of this. It is fiction for a reason after all. It does not go so far as to ruin or cheapen the story which does reach a resolution that most readers will be satisfied.

The one thing that may deter some readers is that the story is based on the English justice process and agencies. There were times when I felt a little disoriented, but not enough to cause problems with following the story.

Overall, The Disappeared is a timely, well written mystery novel from M. R. Hall. I look forward to reading his future work.

Overall: B

There are a few things you need to know that will either help you decide whether to get this book or increase your understanding of it once you start to read.

The publishers compare it to a series that I don't think it really fits. The book jacket starts out with the phrase: "In the bestselling tradition of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series...." I chose this book largely on the basis of that comparison and it is nothing like the Scarpetta series. The character Kay Scarpetta is (at least for most of the series) a medical examiner and is a forensic pathologist by training - the person who does the autopsies to determine the medico-legal cause of death. In the UK, a coroner is a judicial officer and must, like Jenny Cooper the protagonist of this book, be a lawyer. She has a pathologist to do the medical investigation.

So the first thing to know is that this book is more like a legal mystery than anything else. If you are looking for a medical/forensics mystery, you won't find it here. This is more of a missing persons case. Jenny Cooper has been the county coroner in the Severn Vale District for six months. Two young men disappeared years ago and have been declared legally dead; the mother of one of them asks Jenny Cooper to hold an inquest to determine what happened. The book is about the inquest she holds as coroner and her attempts to discover the truth despite many obstacles put in her way.

The second thing to know relates to the ethnic labels we use in the US that are different than what use in the UK. The missing young Muslim men and others of similar ethnic origin are often referred to in the book as "Asians." I was puzzled enough to email the author for clarification. He wrote back and told me that 'Asian' in Britain is usually used to describe those of Indian or Pakistani origin. If US readers keep this in mind as they read, they'll get a more accurate mental picture of the characters.

I struggled with another aspect of the book. I like female protagonists who are strong and smart. Jenny Cooper is a wreck. She takes pills just to cope with her everyday life and is emotionally fragile. Her teenage son lives with her after her divorce and they have a rocky relationship. Often portions of the book concerning her emotional state overshadowed the mystery part of the plot and it wasn't as much fun to read. I had almost decided not to read any other books in the series (the first book is The Coroner) when I got to the epilogue and read the bombshell there. I won't spoil anything about the book but it looks like Jenny could be a lot more interesting than I expected. I'm still not sure I want to read the first book but will look for the next one in the series before I make up my mind about the character.