Bestseller White's 13th Alan Gregory thriller gets off to a fast start with the psychologist's discovery of the corpse of his social worker colleague Hannah Green at their shared offices in Boulder, Colo. But the case that propels the narrative is that of "another little girl [who] has disappeared on Christmas night in Boulder." The echoes of the JonBenet Ramsey murder are unmistakable (if never mentioned explicitly), but this time the "little girl" is a teenager, Mallory Miller—and she may simply have run away. Her entire family is dysfunctional: her schizophrenic mother, for example, moved to Las Vegas to indulge her obsession for attending other people's weddings. Then others begin to disappear: Diane, another colleague of Alan and Hannah, who was in Las Vegas searching for Mallory's mother; Bob, one of Gregory's patients with an obsessive interest in Mallory's disappearance; and the mysterious man who lives next door to Mallory. The events are all linked, of course, and Gregory doggedly pursues their connections while juggling his many professional and family responsibilities. The novel wallows too deeply in therapy ethics, and the plot isn't nearly compelling enough to justify its complexity, but as usual the author, himself a psychologist, uses his professional knowledge to paint a convincing backdrop of the world of clinical practice. Expect another bestseller.
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Eight years to the day after JonBenet Ramsey was murdered, her childhood friend and neighbor, Mallory, winds up missing. At first, her disappearance seems unconnected to the disappearance of Diane, one of Boulder (Colorado) psychologist Alan Gregory's colleagues, or the apparent murder of Diane's friend Hannah. But nothing is coincidental in a White murder mystery, and once again, he expertly places the good doctor in the middle of one doozy of a whodunit. Alan's wife, Lauran, a prosecuting attorney, suffers from MS, and it's getting worse; with all the tragedy around him, he's feeling much more protective of his children, yet his attention is drawn elsewhere as two of his patients are implicated in the kidnappings, the murder, or both. While White draws his characters with an uncommon depth and richness for the mystery genre, he paints no character better than the city of Boulder itself: the mountains, the sudden gusty weather, the bustling city center--all play a role. Although White is himself a trained clinical psychologist, one gets the feeling he empathizes with the city more than with Dr. Gregory. Another fine addition to a popular series. REVWR
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