I've read a couple of other books by Stephen White that feature the psychologist Alan Gregory. They're always set in Boulder, which is kind of fun, since I recognize some of the places mentioned. This particular story starts off:
"A girl was missing. In any other town it would have been local news...but it wasn't any other town. It was Boulder. It wasn't any other day. It was Christmas. And a girl was missing. Again. God."This time it was a 14-year-old, but it turns out that 8 years before, she had been a classmate of Jon Benet Ramsey, so the news media are hysterical. The police believe that she's a runaway, but as other people connected to her also become missing, Alan is pulled into the search. He encounters many ethical dilemmas, finally making some decisions that could cost him his license.
I like this book fairly well. It wasn't a great read, but there wasn't anything really annoying about it either. It was reasonably fast-paced, but the characters were not particularly engaging. It's not a book that I would go out of my way to recommend.
It doesn't show particularly well in the scan, but the silhouettes of the people are speckled with white in imitation of snow. This was acrylic paint applied with a sponge over a stencil cut from an actual photograph of four people. I didn't want their features to show, as a way to indicate the theme of people who are missing. I am not at all happy with the way I wrote the title. I used walnut ink, and seemed to have no control over how it came out of the pen. Note to self: Gouache works so much better on these acrylic-painted pages.
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