Customer Reviews

The Missing: A Thriller

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After three very long years, the author of Deviant Ways, World Without End and Remembering Sarah is finally back with a new book--The Missing. When Chris Mooney's Deviant Ways was published back in 2000, I considered it one of the best novels to have been written about serial killers. For me, it was equal to anything that Thomas Harris or James Patterson had written up to that date. The book was fast paced with edge-of-your-seat suspense and filled with intriguing characters that the reader wanted to learn more about. It was a winner in every sense of the word. Well, Mr. Mooney's newest novel also deals with a serial killer. This time it's the Traveler, a killer who's moved around the United States during the last two decades, leaving a multitude of missing women behind.

In 1984, while strangling a woman to death in the woods around Belham, Massachusetts, the Traveler is unexpectedly seen by three teenage girls. He later tracks down the teenagers and kills two of them, but the third one (Darby McCormick) barely manages to escape his vengeful wrath. That incident haunts Darby for the rest of her life and is one of the primary reasons that she becomes a crime-scene investigator for the Boston Police Department. Darby is working hard and enjoying her life. That is until she's assigned to work a new case that involves a teenage girl being forcibly taken from her home by an unknown killer. While working the crime scene, Darby finds an emaciated woman hiding beneath the porch of the victim's house and soon discovers that the killer has done this many times before. What Darby doesn't realize is that the Traveler is back in town and that he has his eyes dead-set on her. This is a man who doesn't like to leave behind unfinished business, even if it happened over twenty years ago. If he has his way, Darby's going to be paying a very special visit to his unique torture chamber so that they can play a little catch-up, and won't she be surprised when she realizes who the Traveler really is! Darby's going to have to be at her best just to stay one step ahead of this evil maniac.

Like Deviant Ways, this novel is extremely fast paced and filled with an array of interesting characters. What prevents The Missing from actually achieving the previous novel's sheer brilliance is the fact that it all seems too familiar. I found this book reminding me of John Connolly's Every Dead Thing, Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, and James Patterson's Kiss the Girls and Pop Goes the Weasel. That, however, doesn't mean that The Missing isn't a good read. It is. I got caught up in the story after just a few pages and read the novel in one day, which is now extremely fast for me and my bad eyes. Darby McCormick is a fantastic character who's smart, beautiful, aggressive, and self-motivated. She's the type of person who won't stop until the case is solved and doesn't have a problem with shooting a bad guy. Mr. Mooney has a way of creating great lead characters in all of his novels. The Missing is no exception. In fact, I see this book as a great movie with maybe Ashley Judd playing the lead role. This would be an ideal novel for the screen. Also, the word is that Mr. Mooney is bringing Darby back for a sequel in 2008 with Malcolm Fletcher from Deviant Ways crossing paths with her. That's a book I can't wait to read! I've wanted to find out more about Fletcher since I read Deviant Ways seven years ago. If you're looking for something to hold you on an airplane trip, or at the beach this summer, then The Missing is the book to buy. The chapters are short and the story is loaded with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing till the last page. Be sure to check out Deviant Ways and Remembering Sarah. Then you'll understand why Chris Mooney is on his way to becoming a household name with people who love novels filled with heart-pounding action and gripping suspense. This is an author who doesn't mind letting the blood flow!

The Missing is a great fast paced thriller that will keep you turning the page and wanting more long after the book is finished. Darby McCormick is a down to earth, real protagonist with whom most readers can relate. This is my first Chris Mooney novel. I can't wait to get my hands on his earlier works.

I really liked this book & read it straight through. It was a fast paced thriller and filled with twists & turns. I liked how the beginning starts when Darby was a teenager & how what happened then impacted her life since. At the end everything from the past comes together w/ the present. The Missing was my first Chris Mooney novel & I'm looking forward to reading some of his other books.

WARNING-If you are squeamish and bothered by gore, you shouldn't be reading about serial killers. This book contains both gore and serial killers/killings. I hate it when people review books about such things and complain it was too "graphic".

That said, if like myself, you like a good thriller and aren't bothered by some good old fashioned gore, you'll like this book alot. I picked it up this AM and had a hard time putting it down till I finished it. I loved the way the story started years ago when the heroine was only a teenager and how this case had impacted her life since.

I gave this book four stars instead of five because I felt that part of the ending was a bit "contrived". Other than that small part, I really enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading the rest of Mr. Mooney's other books.

If you want a good thriller, check it out!

Yes. It is "truly gripping". A page-turner from start to end. I don't normally have much time for reading but I found this story truly entertaining and almost impossible to put down. The synopsis above is clear enough and I won't go into details. What I appreciated about this particular story is that you start collecting vital information almost from the very beginning (about the killer's identity). And yet, up to the very end, twists & turns keep popping up, unexpectedly. I am a fan of mysteries and thrillers, and this was a very good one. Well done to the author.

This book was excellent. It has great characters, great setting, and a great plot. It was creepy and intense. I would compare this book to a mixture of Thomas Harris and John Sandford, which is a compliment to Mooney. I devoured this book in two sittings, it was that good. I will be reading more of Chris Mooney in the future. A+ for The Missing.

I do not know how Chris Mooney or the publisher got all these top notch thriller/suspense authors to give this book such praise. I thought the plot was very disjointed, I didn't give a lick about one character. Some of the plot twists were absurd. And it is obvious they wanted to push this book through to its publication date, as the end came nearer the typos and grammatical errors occured on almost every page.

In 1984 best friends Darby McCormick, Melanie Cruz and Stacey Stephens are hiking in the woods when they accidentally observe a man killing a woman. Darby calls the police as her hero her father "Big Red" is a cop, but though her dad promised he would catch the killer, the culprit was never caught.

The impact of the horrific crime scene remains with Darby almost as much as her adulation of her late dad; she obtains a doctorate in criminal psychology and becomes a Boston Crime Lab crime scene investigator. Her current case feels a bit like déjà vu as she and her partner Jackson "Coop" Cooper search for clues to the whereabouts of a missing girl, Carol Cranmore. This investigation quickly ties back to what happened when she was sixteen as Stacey is a murder victim and Melanie is among THE MISSING leaving a terrorized Darby in a constant state of panic that she is next.

This is fun Reagan Era police procedural filled with twists and turns as Darby begins to unravel the truth about a serial killer and her father, whose statue of greatness has begin to crumble in her mind. The story line is action-packed and filled with twists, but also contains typical sidebars of the sub-genre like the brass as always bungling, stumbling and interfering. The serial killer crowd will enjoy Chris Mooney's exciting thriller.

Harriet Klausner

The author was born and raised in Lynn, Massachusetts and attended college at the University of new Hampshire and in his own words "tried to study, of all things computer science" and was less than successful at it. He quickly switched his major to English with the emphasis on creative writing. He now lives just outside Boston with his wife and son and is at work on his second novel in the Darby McCormick series.

It is always nice to find a new author and Chris Mooney is certainly new to me and although I am an avid reader of virtually anything, thrillers are not the first thing that I would pull off the book shelf. What a pleasant surprise, the book is well written, well structured and the characters are not only well rounded, but believable. In a book of this type it is always a temptation for the author to include as much gratuitous sex, violence, blood, you name it, they include it, as possible. But this novel strikes a good balance and is all the more scary and thrilling because of that.

When CSI Darby McCormick finds an emaciated woman, clearly not in her right mind hiding at the scene of a violent kidnap, she runs a DNA test to identify the woman. The resulting test confirms that the woman was the victim of an abduction that occurred over five years ago. She has somehow managed to escape from the clutches of the person or persons who have kept her caged up.

With a teenage girl also missing and the woman seriously ill Darby find herself with a plate full of trouble and little time to find where the raving woman has been incarcerated before someone else fall victim. When the FBI butt in on the case it some becomes clear that a serial killer has been on the prowl for years and they are certainly not going to stop now . . .

This book reminded me of Kiss the Girls. Almost the same story line, two men working together to kidnap women and keep them for their own entertainment. One is a loner and the other is in the police force. They are caught because of the loner's mistakes and now the "smart one" has to step in and clean it up. He's been doing it since the beginning and has been able to allude the police because he corrupts the investigations. It has some good parts, but it felt too much like the remake of Kiss the Girls.