Goodbye Forever

At the start of Hill’s uneven second Kit Doyle thriller (after 2015’s If Anything Should Happen), the Sacramento, Calif., crime blogger and radio talk show cohost and her husband, Richard, with whom she’s on the verge of splitting, go to a farmers’ market. There Richard confides that his 17-year-old niece, Jessica, whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years, has gone missing, and he introduces her to the girl’s mother, Sarah, who’s selling organic plums at a booth. Kit turns for help to former cop John Paul Nathan, who tells her the farewell note that Jessica left Sarah is identical to ones left by other missing teens. Sure this is no coincidence, Kit decides that the only way to locate these kids is to pose as a runaway. Readers will admire the chutzpah with which the 27-year-old finagles her way into a teenage cabal bent on misdeeds, but the disjointed plot doesn’t do justice to the intriguing setup. Agent: Laura Dail, Laura Dail Literary Agency. (May)