When The Stars Go Dark by Paula McClain (2021) We felt the same aura of Deja Vu reading this as we experienced while plowing through Ashley Audrain's sociopath-child drama "The Push" a few weeks ago.....(see the post of 5/13/21).
Simply.....we've read this story before. Multiple times.
Paula McClain may or may not have been aware of the dozens of thrillers that deal with a severely traumatized law enforcement officer (or sometimes an independent freelancer) who specializes in rescuing kidnapped kids from their odious predators.
We assume she felt that with her primary talent for historical literary fiction, she'd bring some gravitas, deeper psychological probing, more depth of character and documentary-like feel to this genre, along with the thrills that readers expect in this kind of story.
And just as Audrey Audrain bent the the killer-kid genre to her will, turning it into a heartrending tragic drama, McLain brings all those literary fiction strengths to this novel set in 1993, centering around Anna Hart, a missing persons detective barely recovered from her own horrendous personal tragedy.
Hart, also a survivor of an equally terrible childhood, seeks down-time solace in her home town of Mendecino on the Northern California coast, She finds the town rocked by the disappearance of a 15 year old girl, the daughter of a movie star actress. And other girls from neighboring communities have been taken as well, including the real life Polly Klaas of Petaluma, the 12 year old abducted at knifepoint from a slumber party at her house.
Volunteering to assist in the Mendecino investigation sends Hart down a tortuously slow investigative path, littered with obstacles like the girl's strange, uncooperative parents, a slew of blind alley clues and suspects and the ghosts and sad memories of her childhood.
Sorry to report, all of this heaviness and internal angst makes for a slow, uninvolving read and we frequently put the book down whenever our interest and patience wore out. Which it did. Often.
By the time McClain remembers to end the story, the abductor reveal and showdown come off as unsurprising, perfunctory and hastily slapped together in the last few chapters. That's when we let out a long sigh and wondered if this book was at all worth the time spent reading it.
We've pointed out before in other reviews that literary fiction authors who take the plunge into thriller territory are choosing to walk a thin tightrope over a deep canyon.........thinking they can hold their readers' attention as they layer up the chills with their seriousness of purpose and profound insights into the human condition.
It's a tough balancing act and many are not up to that task. And neither is "When The Start Go Dark" 2 stars (**).
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