An extraordinary novel. This will be the suspense of 2021. But so very much more than a page-turning suspense. This is literature at its finest and most accessible (and with imagery that is as far from clichéd as it is possible to get), this is gut-wrenching, heart-warming, and yes, educational…with layer upon layer of depth. This is a story of vulnerability, and resilience, and community, and place, and healing. Thank you, Paula McLain. And thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy.

This is the first I’ve read of this author – I’ve had her hit historical fiction novel The Paris Wife waiting on my Kindle for years, and it will be getting bumped up the list now. McLain is an established writer who’s enjoyed success in a range of genres – even poetry – but this is her debut in crime fiction. And I adored it. You can tell reading this novel that this is a seasoned author, one who knows how to use words in a literary, almost lyrical way, but also how to craft a suspenseful, plot-driven story.

Anna Hart is a perfect protagonist, both strong and vulnerable. She’s fallen on hard times, she’s lost a child and her husband has asked her to leave, so she find herself driving to the place where she grew up. She lands in Mendicino, a coastal town in California, but this isn’t going to be a relaxing break. Because Anna is also a skilled detective specialising in missing children, and when a teenage girl goes missing in the small town, she can’t help but get involved.

The book opens like an emotional drama but quickly ramps up the tension to become a crime thriller once Anna gets on the case. We know that she has a complicated past, one which is gradually revealed throughout the story, but alongside this there’s plenty of action as she reuinites with childhood friend Will to investigate the missing local girl.

Like with her historical fiction, McLain weaves in grains of truth within the story. In this case, it’s real life statistics and cases of missing girls and child abuse which act to highlight that, while the main focus of the story is fiction, it is alarmingly close to the truth. It’s set in the 1990s, as the internet is just beginning to gain momentum, and this gives an extra layer of historical context as the characters reflect on the internet’s potential to completely alter the way these investigations take place and how information is shared.

But, whilst dealing with some very serious topics, the book manages to not become too dark and depressing and avoids any graphic depictions of abuse. That’s because it’s also peppered with hope and beauty, in Anna’s reflections on her relationships with her adoptive family and the idyllic nature of Mendocino. McClain brings to life the coast, the woods and hiking trails surrounding Anna’s old home in a stunning, lyrical way.

All in all, McClain has written a beautiful, multi-layered and sensitive story with enough action to satisfy thrill-seekers too. It’s a story which is ingrained in truth and history. Her author’s note at the end is well worth a read – in fact, I wish it had been at the beginning so I had more understanding of the book’s context before starting it. But I think she summarises the story’s significance perfectly with this quote.

“Anna Hart’s pain has led to her path, her destiny, and mine has led me precisely here. To these characters, real and imaginary, to the fern forest, dripping with fog, to the bluffs above the roaring Pacific, to the cabin in the deep dark woods, and into the very heart of this book, which is as personal as anything I’ve ever written.”

It’s a story I think she should be proud of.

This is not specifically one of McLain’s admired historical novels as such. She has crossed to crime fiction albeit the story “starts” in 1993 and covers a very limited period. But in reality life does not start today so to come close to truth this tale will inevitably refer back to decades before that for the characters which start to emerge. Where does a person learn their ways, deeply ingrained habits and beliefs of life? Some say it is nurture, some nature, some say a mixture of both. This novel will explore these themes through the way that crimes – both public and hidden – play their way out in this tale.
The key character is Anna Hart; she has been working for a decade in the police and has chosen to move into a department dealing with child abuse and murder. She has seen dark things, not entirely to her own mental welfare, and it seems has become unable to put her visions away and has become obsessive in her need to solve the problems. As the novel unrolls we will see that her marriage of seven years has started to unravel, particularly in the face of an unspoken “disaster”. All we are initially told is that Anna had a baby (no longer with her) and that she has moved back to a small town where she lived for her teenage years. Shortly after she arrives the daughter of a retired local actress will go “missing”. Anna will offer help in the investigation.
It seems that in those years in the town she lived with a foster family for about ten years and her new parents grounded her in the first security she had known. She had been taught rural life style with survival in the woods, but the nature too of a solid, loving family. She settled, made friends and started to grow. He friends included the son of the local sheriff (who has now inherited that role) and twins, children of a local artist. The daughter went missing at fifteen and a few days later her body is found dumped in a river. The community is traumatised and does not forget. Life is not idyllic for Anna. Her foster mother will die young and when Anna is eighteen and has a college place her foster father will walk into the woods and not return, leaving her alone. She leaves the town and starts her new life.
Anna had come from a chaotic early family life and as a child had been separated from two half siblings. This has occasioned a guilt she has carried with her. But with the practical experience and difficulties of her life she has developed a hypothesis that vulnerable and abused children are “visible” in a certain way to those with the eyes to see. Unfortunately these might be the eyes – of the predators who will prey on them. Abuse seemingly might not be as extreme as murder (which leaves a visible body) but can be extensive, imbedded in the family home and most of it will travel under the official or legal radars. When a girl or young woman disappears – and as this novel makes clear there is a huge number of the – police investigating will have to work their way through the evidence, the hidden histories, lies and evasions to try and come to the truth. In this novel the disappearance of young fifteen year old Cameron is not going to be the only one – locally there are two more lassies (in addition to the historic case from fifteen years before and the many unsolved others not too far away). So the issue arises are any of the crimes linked? This could possibly provide more evidence. Or are they separate? Are the girls alive, or dead, or at immediate risk of death?
So this novel uses the tale of these investigations to explore these deeper issues, the evolving techniques of police detection and the then rising awareness of how killers and abusers might operate. But it also explores the social aspects behind that. Which of the missing will be reported? Which ones will the police act on? Will the community or media get behind the search? And with so much abuse around, even in extremis, how much will be spoken of and how much covered up? How long can serial abusers stay free to abuse? How will the damage caused play out in later years?
So this is a busy, multi layered, novel that melds these issues (and others) with the fictional tale of trying to track a potential killer against the clock. But it is one which carries a clear resonance of truth. It feels like that the aware – wherever in the modern world you live – have seen this play out so many times before. Yes, there will have to be a “happy” (more or less) resolution. With the author’s ultimate message (through Anna’s plans) that it is not what happens, but how we carry it that is important.

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain is an intense, powerful thriller featuring a formidable female detective who specialises in finding missing kids. Hugely enjoyable!

Troubled detective Anna Hart takes a break from her family and her stressful San Francisco day job as a detective leading a project to track missing kids. On her first day back in the town where she spent her formative years, she overhears locals talking about a missing girl. She puts it out of her mind and starts spending time reacquainting herself with the expansive wild forests in which she spent so much time bonding with her foster father. However Anna is unable not to stop herself from getting involved in the search for the missing girl once she realises that her friend Will Flood is the sheriff in charge of the investigation.

In this pacy novel the author has created a number of very strong characters with intriguing backstories who mostly work well together whilst not always agreeing with each other. The rugged but dangerous scenery of this northern California forest is so attractively described.

I have read that this is a new genre for McLain but she has certainly had no apparent difficulty adapting - this is similar to the Karin Slaughter style of which I am a big fan!