REVIEW: "Local Woman Missing" by Mary Kubica
What is it about true crime that makes it so... irresistible?
As I worked my way through my most recent read, my pace was hindered by the fact that I was in the process of moving. As per usual, my husband took on the lion's share of the work. But between deep renovations and just general relocation of personal possessions — the heaviest of which were undoubtedly my books — there was just so much to do. Given this, I felt absolutely obligated to help.
So, instead of sinking into my sofa every night, a glass of red wine in one hand and a book in the other, I would head over to the new house and do something I absolutely detest: physical labor. My stays at the new house were never too long, because, as the sun would set and unfamiliar shadows would play large on the tall walls of the two story great room, I would become unnerved.
While I have pretty much always been an incredible wimp, my general unease was certainly exacerbated by the fact that, while working, I would ingest a steady diet of old episodes of the Crime Junkie podcast. Listening to story after story after story of murder and rape and still unexplained disappearances is enough to make anyone feel like it's not a matter of if, but when, you fall victim to your own tragedy.
Unlike the podcast I couldn't stop binging, Mary Kubica's newest novel, Local Woman Missing, isn't an account of a true crime, but it certainly reads like one.
It’s been 11 years since three people went missing in what was, otherwise, a safe and secure community. First it’s new mother Shelby Tebow who disappears. Then, only a few weeks after, Meredith Dickey and her daughter Delilah also go missing. Given the fact that these two eerily similar occurrences take place both so geographically and temporally close to each other, it seems impossible that they aren’t connected.
Despite the interest and dedication of community members, though, the cases go largely cold.
But then, on a day not so different from any other, a diminutive young woman is found, injured and malnourished and dirty. And what she tells the person who happens upon her shocks everyone: she is Delilah Dickey and, for 11 years, she has been kept captive in a basement.
As Delilah tries to settle back into a life she long ago forgot, living with her bereaved father and the brother who was barely old enough to remember a time before her disappearance, police and community members revisit these cases with a renewed energy and a revitalized confidence in their ability to unearth answers that have too long remained hidden.
But what they find is something that they could never have expected. It appears that their collective trust has been misplaced and that the perpetrator of these crimes isn’t some wayward straggler but, more alarmingly, a person in whom they placed their trust.
In this Local Woman Missing, Kubica managed to weave a tale that was both incredibly twisty and entirely believable. All too often, in attempting to embed the jaw-dropping twists that readers expect to be present in modern thrillers, authors create stories that are so convoluted and unrealistically complex that they require a significant suspension of disbelief.
That wasn’t the case here.
While readers will have to believe in synchronicity of tragic events — accept the fact that a series of largely unrelated events all occurred in the same horrible span of time — the way in which Kubica layered these occurrences made it easy to do so.
A particular strength of this novel was Kubica’s use of varied perspectives and her decision to constantly jump back and forth in time.
By utilizing multiple perspectives, Kubrica allowed readers to discover and get to know each of the characters in this tale in an organic way. And given that at the core of her story was not just one nuclear family but, ostensibly, a whole community, her ability to not just introduce but also develop these characters in a realistic way that was neither clunky nor boring was hugely impressive.
Similarly, her decision to use a flexible timeline, shifting back and forth across the span of 11 years, really allowed her mystery to unfold organically. As you move through this novel, pieces of the puzzle start to slip into place naturally. Even with the shocking twists never felt forced or rushed or inauthentic. It truly felt as if you were a member of this community, gathering bits and pieces of knowledge and trying to arrange them in a picture that explained what had happened to these three missing members.
I found this really satisfying because, even though there were twists you likely wouldn’t see coming, savvy readers could solve this mystery with the facts that were shared throughout the novel. Kubica didn’t, as so many authors do, hold back so many clues — in an attempt to ensure a shocking denouement — that it became impossible to actually figure it all out. And, given that many — or I might even argue all — thriller fans are actually closet armchair detectives, I think that this was a wise choice.
Thanks to it’s ripped-from-the-headlines feel and it’s robust cast of realistic characters, this was Kubica’s strongest effort to date.
Local Woman Missing earns 5 out of 5 cocktails.
While I have never really gotten into true crime writing, I am absolutely obsessed with true crime TV shows and podcasts. Are you a fan of true crime? If so, what’s your favorite show, podcast, or book? Tell me about them in the comments, below, so I can add them to my list.
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*I was provided a gifted copy of this title by the publisher*
