Chloe Cates is Missing by Mandy McHugh

 

This appears to be one of those modern thriller/mystery novels with handsful of unreliable narrators and constant unfurling revelations in the back quarter. I am at best ambivalent about that structure--at some point further revelatory twists just feel ... cheap--but this novel is written reasonably competently, and Ms. McHugh does seem to have some insight into her characters. I've read at least one other novel recently where a detective with a baby on the way was investigating a crime against a child, I dunno if that's coincidence or something once clever that's drifting haplessly toward trope. This is a novel that feels grimier than anything by Joy or Cosby or Burke, mainly because the characters aren't fighting against such structural forces, they've mostly done this damage to themselves and each other.