Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

 

In Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica, two women, both mothers, go missing ten days apart in a community outside of Chicago eleven years ago. Worse, one of them had her daughter with her when she disappeared. One case goes cold, both cases leave families in distress.

In another state, a young girl held captive in a dark basement makes a shiv out of her spoon with which she is fed from a dog bowl. After stabbing one of her captors, she makes a break for it. She tells the person who finds her that her name is Delilah Dickey, a girl who has been missing for eleven years.

While one woman’s husband is behind bars for her murder, the other husband, Delilah’s father, is a shadow of his former self when he and his son Leo are reunited with Delilah. Through police investigation, therapy, and hypnosis, Delilah may be able to put the pieces together about what happened on a day eleven years ago.

But then something strange happens. Even though the DNA test confirms Delilah’s identity, her best friend from childhood notices that a facial feature is missing, one that cannot be accounted for through eleven years of growth and change. Doubt builds about the girl claiming to be Delilah, and Delilah’s father is shattered again.

At that point, Kubica slams the plot into reverse when the false Delilah makes a run for it and accelerates at full speed to an unexpected climax. I was a little unsettled about the resolution as it did not seem feasible to me but news stories about captive women do support such an ending.

Mary Kubica, a one-time high school history teacher, lives outside of Chicago with her family. This is her sixth psychological thriller.