BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED - Lisa Gardner

4 stars

Wow, this mystery packed a punch... but the true star of the show was the complexity of the main character/amateur detective, Frankie Elkin. Very strong opener for a woman I hope we see in more sequels.

Writing: ★★★★
Pacing: ★★★
Mystery(s)/Reveal(s): ★★★
Characters: ★★★★★

A woman with a haunted past, Frankie Elkin has carved out a space within empty spaces for herself as a traveling amateur investigator. No home, no possessions, no family to encourage her to settle down and keep her roots.

She follows the trails of the missing. And she's found 14 of them so far. None were alive, but that's not what Frankie promised their family in the first place--Frankie promised to find them. And she does.

In Before She Disappeared, Frankie arrives in Boston with her nose to the ground on a missing persons case that's spent 11 months gathering dust by the local investigators. Angelique Badeau, a promising young Haitian immigrant attending Boston Academy high school, went missing after school one day. The leads dried up fast.

Her younger brother, Emmanuel, is convinced that she's still alive somewhere.

The cops, including the brooding Detective Lotham in charge of the case, don't think that's the case.

Frankie doesn't know who is right just yet, but she's determined to find out.

If there's one thing Frankie is good at, it's asking the right questions. And being such a pain in cops' ass that they begrudgingly ignore her tactics and let her stumble around the fringes of the case. With one begrudging Detective Lotham at her side, Frankie's ready to roll...

I thought this was one heck of a good mystery/thriller. There was just enough of a pacing issue to keep it from being an all-time favorite for me, personally, but it came close. Before She Disappeared is a tightly plotted, atmospheric, and memorable thriller with a rock-solid core in its protagonist, Frankie.

Frankie and her singular sense of drive really carried this novel for me, even when I struggled to engage with the plot at the beginning. I wanted to know more about this woman—why was she doing this? What in her past made her this way, and what would it take for her to recover?

Other elements that really worked for me was the setting and side characters. I've never been to Boston, and I'm definitely not plugged in to the Haitian immigrant population and their day-to-day flow, but in this novel the author breathed life into that scenario and I could almost believe that I was there and knew what the heck I was talking about (obviously I don't, but it speaks to the author's research and/or ability to convey a particular geographic imprint that I felt that "sold" onto the worldbuilding).

I'd strongly recommend this one to fans of Louisa Luna, Jane Harper, and other moody mystery/thrillers with killer writing and unbelievably real main characters.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.