Book Review – Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister

Pages: 393
Published: 1st August 2023
Genre: Mystery/Psychological Thriller
Content warnings: Violence, misogyny

I will start this post by saying the review you see below is not the original. I started a review and was very pleased with what I had written, but then it all got deleted! As much as I wanted to, it was hard to summon the energy or the brain power to write that all over again, so I hastily put this together. I hope it still presents a good picture of the book.

OLIVIA:

22 years old. No history of running away.
Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley.
And never emerging.

JULIA:

Detective Chief Inspector Julia Day ought to be out hunting for Olivia. After all, missing person’s cases are a race against the clock. Only this one is different.

Because someone just threatened Julia:

Find Olivia, and we’ll take your daughter . . .

The thing that sets Gillian McAllister apart from many other thriller authors is that she likes to be innovative. Her books do not possess the same old tropes and banal resolutions, there are none of the clichés that we see trotted out time after time. Instead she thinks outside the box by presenting us innovative concepts and sliding doors, often with killer twists, although this time she may just have bitten off a little bit more than she can chew.

Right from the get-go, there is an air of menace and tension. The atmosphere feels dark and gloomy in a way that just grips you, truly setting the scene, and this feeling is exacerbated the fact that the motives of certain characters are unclear. To add to the intrigue, there is not one but two second person narratives in this story.

This is both a strength and a weakness. It creates a sense of uncertainty with unreliable narrators and gives the plot an extra layer of unpredictability, but on the other hand it is an example of how the book tries too hard to be thought-provoking. In fact, the novelty eventually wears off once you know what is going on.

The plot is very complex and in the beginning it deliberately sets out to give extremely little away. You are given lots of questions to ponder such as how Olivia Johnson vanished and why Julia is threatened into planting evidence. Thankfully, a lot of the questions get answered earlier than you might expect. Take what happened to Genevieve. When you find out early on that she was involved a traumatic incident a year ago, you fear it might be dragged out until the end, but we are only kept waiting for a few chapters.

However, these moments are nothing compared to the main twist, which takes place halfway through. It is a twist that catches you off guard in the way it happens quite suddenly and totally changes your expectations for what direction the rest of the plot will take. The problem is, when you get to the end it feels like the twist is there for effect, especially as the story loses momentum slightly in the final act.

It is full of brilliant ideas and is very well written generally, but the plot does gradually start to suffer and there is not the same kind of connection to the characters that you feel in McAllister’s other books. The same plot device is used three times, which is twice too many and when it came to finding out the identity the criminal mastermind, the reveal did not have the effect it should have.

The three different perspectives means there is a lot going on, with Julia’s third person narrative taking up the greatest share of the action. As a senior police officer she is well intentioned but also flawed, being a serious control freak and a surprisingly poor judge of character. There were things about her that were likeable, but she is not the most inspiring of protagonists.

Lewis’ mind works in a slightly twisted way as we notice when we find out more about him. He definitely falls into the morally grey category given his actions, but he is also someone beset with grief and he channels that in an unusual yet determined way. As for Emma, she is a mother caught between a rock and a hard place, desperate to trust her son but helplessly suspicious of him. The fact they are written in the second person makes their voices more compelling.

It is impossible to be from Bristol and not mention the setting. Although Portishead is on the outskirts, some of the areas described in the book were familiar. It was hard to think of Portishead as a place shrouded in darkness and deceit, but the atmosphere and storytelling – in addition to how the characters get caught in a vicious circle of criminality – makes it seem like the kind of place you would not like to be on a dark night.

Overall, there is a lot to admire about what the author was trying to do with this book and you can thoroughly appreciate the numerous ideas that accompany it, but it does not quite all come together as a great piece of literature. The twist in the middle is a bold move and not necessarily a bad one, though the sense of mystery fades away a little and that leads to a relatively unsatisfying conclusion. Close, but no cigar.

All the respect in the world for Gillian McAllister for coming up with this premise, and she certainly nails the atmosphere. The book wrong-footed me at times, but I do think the execution was lacking in places and the plot – along with the pacing does falter in the second half.

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐