The Neighbour

Synopsis:

This is what happened …

It was a case guaranteed to spark a media feeding frenzy-a young mother, blond and pretty, disappears without a trace from her South Boston home, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter as the only witness and her handsome, secretive husband as the prime suspect.

In the last six hours …

But from the moment Detective Sergeant D. D. Warren arrives at the Joneses’ snug little bungalow, she senses something off about the picture of wholesome normality the couple worked so hard to create. On the surface, Jason and Sandra Jones are like any other hardworking young couple raising a four-year-old child. But it is just under the surface that things grew murkier.

Of the world as I knew it …

With the clock ticking on the life of a missing woman and the media firestorm building, Jason Jones seems more intent on destroying evidence and isolating his daughter than on searching for his “beloved” wife. Is the perfect husband trying to hide his guilt-or just trying to hide? And will the only witness to the crime be the killer’s next victim?

My Opinion:

Sandra Jones, a young wife, mother, and teacher has disappeared. When her husband returns from his job, reporting for a Boston paper, late one night his wife is nowhere to be found, and their 4-year-old is alone in the house. After searching the house and yard for her he calls the police.

Detective Sergeant D.D. Williams is called in to the case by the local police and immediately begins to suspect the husband, Jason. She doesn't think that he is responding in the right and expected way. Instead of being frantic about his wife, he is completely focused on their daughter Ree.
Before long there is another suspect offered up, a convicted sex offender who lived just five houses down, Aidan Brewster. And once they go to her school to talk to her fellow teachers, it would appear she has a passionate defender in a grade-seven student who has been helping her with Internet research.

As the police gather suspects rather than eliminating them, and both they and Jason agree that Ree knows more than she is saying, things get more and more tense.

We learn that both Sandra and Jason are fleeing from monsters in their past, and they haven't shared the specifics with each other. We learn the terrible sorrow of the young sex offender. Things are revealed to us little by little by the different voices, and just as quickly new questions are raised.

What was Jason doing on the Internet and what shocked Sandra into taking her concerns to others? What did Ree see? Why was Sandra so scared of her father? What is Jason running from?

This is a book that will keep you on the edge right until the end. A good read.