Whatever resolutions the characters may find by the end of the book are not the kind they've been seeking-or the kind we're expecting. Ultimately, the beauty of this book is less about plot than about its insights into unexpected connections between people. The many false leads along the way add to the excitement. The characters' competing perspectives on Edith and her motives keep the story speeding forward. Manon navigates the stress, bureaucracy, and cafeteria meals of her job to solve some of the agency's most vexing mysteries, and spends her free time going on terrible internet dates.Īlthough Edith is offstage as the plot develops, Manon's dogged and deft investigation allows us to develop a portrait of the missing woman: clever, earnest, and spoiled, a little dramatic and a little self-dramatizing, capable of immense selfishness and endearing kindness, of callousness and tremendous feeling. Our hero-the reader's best hope for a satisfying resolution to the case-is Manon, a smart, lonely, bitingly funny detective with Scotland Yard.

All of them have secrets and most are characters prone to telling half-truths. The author embeds clues in intricate psychological portraits of each of her characters. One tantalizing thing about Missing, Presumed is that the mystery feels as though it should be easy to solve. Surely the culprit must be her handsome boyfriend? Or, her needy best friend? Or, the affable cold-blooded killer just out of prison? Or? A beautiful young Cambridge grad named Edith Hind, vanishes from her house on a snowy winter night, leaving behind her cell phone, her keys, her coat, a broken wine glass, and some drops of blood.

Missing presumed a novel susie steiner