What the Dead Know - Laura Lippman

 

Maybe it's just my personal headspace at the moment, but this one took a bit of time to grow on me - although that has happened before with slow introductions. I did end up enjoying this mystery quite a bit with its many twists'n'turns and unexpected sidelines.

A random car accident brings up a decades-old cold case involved two missing teenage girls, as the enigmatic woman who caused the accident claims to be one of the girls. From there the story moves back'n'forth in time, with some pure narration of the past mixed with present-day mystery as the woman guards her past'n'present identities (she initially simply claims knowledge of the long-ago events). Murder, abduction, pedophilia, torture, strange characters and more overlap as bits'n'pieces of the story evolves, but no one is quite certain of anything until the mother appears from her isolation in Mexico.

Nothing is quite what it seems and no one really knows everything about the case until the end - if even then. 

Plenty of genuine surprises and even while none of the characters are truly good people, you do get sucked into the tale. Definitely worthwhile.