As befits this lyrical language, Gautreaux presents Simoneaux's journey in near-Biblical terms. He's a seeker, searching for the permanence of family in an increasingly precarious world. At times, Gautreaux makes him a bit too much of a Job, piling on the punishments. It is not enough that his own child die — he must wound someone else's. It is not enough that a little girl be stolen on his watch and that he lose his job — when, against huge odds, he recovers the girl, her mother must blame him for the changes in the child — he must, in fact, be cursed by her dying breath: "Suddenly, she arched her back and cried out, as from a dream, 'It's all your fault.' "
Still, the beauty of the writing and a plot loaded with intricate switchbacks keep the book going. And if occasionally The Missing shudders like an old riverboat, it remains a journey worth taking, the craft sufficient for the load.
Related:
Smooth lyricism, Death watch, Undercover, More 
- Smooth lyricism
In "The Sea Itself," Betsy Sholl writes of a No said to the storm tide: "...such a total No , it became a kind of Yes ,/so the world was suddenly everything at once,/solid and shifty, stormy and calm."
- Death watch
Michael Connelly's newspaper elegy
- Undercover
Ana Grey is the fearless heroine of April Smith's dark and thoughtful thriller series. But reading these fast-paced books shows the question to be more complicated. Ana Grey is, after all, not only a brave FBI agent, but also the cowering daughter of a racist bully.
- Hooked
Providence author and physician Michael Stein has an uncanny ability to make a medical case history read like a novel in his newest book, The Addict (William Morrow, 288 pages, $26). It's not only that he makes us care about the patients whose lives he describes; it's also that he puts himself into the narrative.
- Plain spoken
In American prose, there is a plain style, a child of the 20th century, descending from Hemingway and Cather. The best New Yorker writers — James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, Janet Malcolm — have it.
- Surf bored
Paranoia isn't what it used to be — not for Thomas Pynchon, at any rate.
- Less
Topics:
Books
, Book Reviews, World War I
