When Dr. Lorne Thorpe’s ten-year-old daughter Shawn disappears, his well-ordered life turns chaotic — and Lorne launches on a downward spiral. A pediatric oncologist, he tries to persist in his work at Ottawa’s Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario but is soon self-medicating and drinking alone. Eventually the stress on his remaining family (which includes his teenage son Owen) leads to the loss of his equally confused wife, Veronica, who goes to his suspect next-door neighbour, whose own wife has abandoned him and their mentally challenged son. Soon Lorne is literally losing his mind. How can these things be happening to him? His adult life has been a model of order and achievement. Who would want to harm Dr. Lorne Thorpe?
Detective Kevin Beldon’s investigation of the child abduction implicates some unusual suspects, including Lorne’s competitive and randy colleague Dr. Art Foster, the comically menacing Lewis brothers, and the dwarfish Bob Browne, who works weird cures on sick children. Then something happens more startling even than Shawn’s disappearance — and it drops Lorne right down the rabbit hole and out the other side.
The path to solution of the crime passes through the farce of a community-association meeting, murder and imprisonment, and the pathetic world of child beauty pageants. The climax is disturbing, the resolution inevitable. Lynch’s territory of Troutstream, a generic suburb, has never presented such strangely familiar characters or troubling events, or such hard-won hope.
Detective Kevin Beldon’s investigation of the child abduction implicates some unusual suspects, including Lorne’s competitive and randy colleague Dr. Art Foster, the comically menacing Lewis brothers, and the dwarfish Bob Browne, who works weird cures on sick children. Then something happens more startling even than Shawn’s disappearance — and it drops Lorne right down the rabbit hole and out the other side.
The path to solution of the crime passes through the farce of a community-association meeting, murder and imprisonment, and the pathetic world of child beauty pageants. The climax is disturbing, the resolution inevitable. Lynch’s territory of Troutstream, a generic suburb, has never presented such strangely familiar characters or troubling events, or such hard-won hope.
I was craning about for a parking spot, squinting against the glare and silently cursing my forgotten shades. Sweating as I maneuvered Veronica’s boxy little VW Golf through the rush of latecomers to the day’s opening of the Museum of Science and Technology. I was proceeding extra carefully because only the day before I’d driven her car into the wall (bumped it only) while parking in my underground spot at work. I’d told Veronica my foot had slipped off the brake onto the accelerator, but that’s not really what had happened. Pulling into my space, at the last second I’d stepped harder on the gas instead of the brake — some jolt. Don’t ask me why. No damage to the car, but I’d been shaken, mostly from the shock at how suddenly it had happened. What must a real accident be like?
Reviews
November 5, 2015 - Article posted by www.thefulcrum.ca:
January 29th, 2016 - Review posted on Goodreads.com:
"This is a bizarre, and in places very violent, mystery set in an imagined suburb of Ottawa. In his third work set in totally-normal appearing Troutstream, author Gerald Lynch takes us on a wild ride during a baking late-summer week in the burbs. The writing is beautiful, but the story is difficult. ... It is violent in stretches. Not in the action, per se, but in the recounting of violence. Lynch’s powers of description are such that it shakes you." ...more
(John Brooke, Goodreads)
"This is a bizarre, and in places very violent, mystery set in an imagined suburb of Ottawa. In his third work set in totally-normal appearing Troutstream, author Gerald Lynch takes us on a wild ride during a baking late-summer week in the burbs. The writing is beautiful, but the story is difficult. ... It is violent in stretches. Not in the action, per se, but in the recounting of violence. Lynch’s powers of description are such that it shakes you." ...more
(John Brooke, Goodreads)
March 16th, 2016 - Review posted on Ottawalife.com:
"Missing Children was my first outing to Troutstream, which by this third book Lynch has built into a fascinating community. The town is populated by interesting characters who had me intrigued every time their stories crossed with Dr. Thorpe’s. I couldn’t help but wonder if these people are the central figures in the other books" ...more
(Eric Murphy, Ottawa Life Magazine)
"Missing Children was my first outing to Troutstream, which by this third book Lynch has built into a fascinating community. The town is populated by interesting characters who had me intrigued every time their stories crossed with Dr. Thorpe’s. I couldn’t help but wonder if these people are the central figures in the other books" ...more
(Eric Murphy, Ottawa Life Magazine)
March 22nd, 2016 - Review posted on Goodreads.com:
"Kudos Gerald. Another page turning, thought provoking riot of prose" ...more
(Barbara Sibbald, Goodreads.com)
"Kudos Gerald. Another page turning, thought provoking riot of prose" ...more
(Barbara Sibbald, Goodreads.com)
Copyright: Gerald Lynch