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Disappearing Spouses and Dead Boyfriends
Sarah Weinman on four new mysteries that brim with cunning and subterfuge.
Credit.Pablo Amargo
May 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
A spouse’s disappearance, and the ensuing discovery of a secret self hidden beneath the surface, ranks high on the list of well-worn plot devices. So how does Laura Dave make this conceit feel fresh in
THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME (Simon & Schuster, 306 pp., $27)? I suspect it has something to do with her skill at character-driven fiction, remembering that people, and relationships, must drive the narrative.
Hannah Hall has “raised losing things to an art form,” a tendency that didn’t stop when she married Owen Michaels. But she must rise above distraction and forgetfulness to figure out why Owen has left and the meaning of his final words, relayed by his teenage daughter, Bailey, whose relationship with Hannah is prickly at best and uncommunicative at worst.