by Sarah Stewart Taylor ★★★★★
In 1993, protagonist Maggie D’Arcy’s favorite cousin Erin went missing in Ireland. Despite a prolonged search including assistance from an inexperienced college-aged Maggie (who left Notre Dame - yay! - to help), Erin was never found.
Fast-forward to 2016, and Erin’s disappearance still haunts Maggie and her extended family, to the point that Maggie has become a detective on Long Island with a growing reputation for finding insightful angles to help solve crimes involving missing persons. That’s when she’s contacted by the authorities in Ireland: Erin’s scarf from 1993 has been found buried in the Irish wilderness. And now another young girl has gone missing, and every second counts if they have any hope of finding the missing girl alive. Is she willing to consult on the case?
While I think the editors at Amazon got a lot of their top 100 right this year, I was shocked this didn’t make it (it was a Best Book of the Month for July), and I was even more surprised it didn’t even make it on to the Top 20 Mysteries & Thrillers list for the year. The story was tightly crafted and Taylor threw in enough possibilities for both Erin’s disappearance and the modern day disappearance that I was kept guessing until the very end. This was one of the better mysteries I’ve read in multiple years, and definitely my favorite in the genre this year by a wide margin. I thought it might even be my book of the year, until Blacktop Wasteland came along and undisputedly claimed that prize.
Previous Best of 2020: #3 - Race the Sands
Next Best of 2020: #1 - Blacktop Wasteland