The Missing Ones

Hill’s intense second Hester Thursby mystery finds Harvard librarian Hester, still traumatized from her experiences in 2018’s Little Comfort, doing the best she can to raise the abandoned four-year-old daughter of her boyfriend’s sister, Daphne, who’s also Hester’s best college friend, in Somerville, Mass. Meanwhile, itinerant Annie has been squatting for months with junkies in an old Victorian house on Little Finisterre Island, Maine. In a small community with long-held secrets and low tolerance for outsiders, Annie feels threatened. Her worries increase as a storm approaches during a search for a missing child. A major reveal well into the book leads to Hester’s traveling to Maine to help Annie. Fans of Little Comfort will enjoy the resolution of open threads in Hester’s personal story, but the chaos in Annie’s world and everyone pulled into it holds the key to the novel’s satisfying tension. Hill is adept at building compassion for his characters in a tight-knit social web while implicating them in dark thoughts and actions. He remains a writer to watch. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Sept.)