MISSING YOU by Harlan Coben

 Finished Th 5/18/23

This is a hardback that Janny loaned to me and it's one of my favorite novels by Coben.

The title of the novel is taken from a 1984 song by John Waite- 'Missing You'.

Kat Donovan is a cop and the daughter of a cop who was murdered 18 years previously. The novel is about Kat trying to find her father's killer and also she was approached by a young man, Brandon who is trying to locate his mother. The kid's mother has been missing for several days and she was involved with an online dating service. 

The storyline deals with 'catfishing'. Professional criminals pretend to be 'lovers' online, but they are really out to clean out clients savings accounts and then killing the victims. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"It’s a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode as emotions she’s ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé, Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and whom she hasn’t seen in eighteen years.

Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable.

As the body count mounts and Kat’s hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she’s ever loved—her former fiancé, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there." 

Notes:

Kat's boyfriend killed Kat's dad because dad hated gays. However, dad was involved with a black gay man named 'Sugar'. 

Kat lives in an apartment at 67th St. Central Park West