THEY DO. Only I didn't make as many angry notes about this one, because it wasn't an ebook (the other day, I kid you not, I pressed my finger to a word on a PRINTED PAGE because I wanted to highlight it and make a note).
Technology!!
So, some guy out there whom the police have named 'Neptune' is kidnapping ladies and cutting off their right hands and sending those to the police, and then five days later he dumps the body somewhere. And I am like, RIGHT ON, because that is so, so creepy. Hey, remember how severed feet keep washing up on the shores of BC? It's, like, eleven so far. So I read this and I am like, EAUGH, and also, go onnnnnn.
And then it is YEARS later and the daughter of the one victim whose body was never found, she is an adult and an architect and has a love life and grown-up stuff etc. And then her mom is FOUND, only she's crazy so she can't give any info re: Neptune, e.g. the identity thereof.
So Reggie (the daughter) goes home to look after her mother, and her childhood friend shows up to be her mother's NURSE because COINCIDENCE, and then the FRIEND'S HAND shows up on the police station steps and OMG REGGIE ONLY HAS FOUR DAYS TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY.
The suspense is actually kind of good. It's the ending that's terrible.
TOILB is similar to Don't Breathe a Word in its Then And Now structure, which I usually LOVE, and which allows the Now characters to be like, Blah blah blah after everything that happened that night, or After that horrible thing we did, or whatever. I AM SO ON BOARD WITH THIS TROPE. I like my fores to be well shadowed.
But you have to deliver. And I'm telling you right now, The Thing that Reggie and her friends did that night, it's not enough. I need salaciousness, I don't need clumsy accidents. And then when Neptune's identity is revealed, I'm not so much disappointed as I am like...Ok? I mean, the clues kind of make sense after the fact, but it's not one of those moments where everything snaps together and you're like, Ah HA! I have been led up the garden PATH. You're just like,
Five caterpillars.