The Disappeared Girl

Martin J. Smith

Nothing stays buried forever, especially not the past.

Two men stand out in a crowd overlooking the Ohio River. A plane is being taken from the water where it crashed decades before. Both men helped put it there.

Jim Christensen’s daughter, Melissa, has been troubled of late. She has dreams that feel like memories, unsettling images percolate to the surface. She remembers a terrifying past, possibly her own, from a time before she was adopted by her father. Christensen’s work as an expert in memory makes him the ideal person to help unlock his daughter’s fragile grasp on her own history. But will he want to learn the truth of where Melissa came from? Who she was before? Who might still be looking for her?

This dizzying novel of suspense takes the reader back into a dirty war and its human costs, into the fevered mind of one of its survivors, and through the crosshairs of a man desperate to keep his own history vanished. (from Netgalley)

My Thoughts

Melissa Christenson knows she is adopted, but knows nothing about her birth parents. When she becomes pregnant, a potential medical issue shows up with her unborn child and she now has an urgent need to find out more about the parents she never knew. Little did she know the can of worms she was about to open.

This was a fast paced page turner. Good suspense with a few plot twists made it one of those books that was hard to put down. It was interesting to learn about Argentina’s “Dirty War” and how this played into the story.

This book sat on my to-be-read list for a long time and I’m very glad I finally decided to give it a try. I did not realize going into this book that the author had written others stories involving the main character, Jim Christenson. I like this one so much that I’m going to give his other books a try.

My thanks to Diversion Books, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read this in exchange for an unbiased review.