The missing white woman

Dishu Yadav Suspense/Thriller

The truth is never skin deep.It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna’s new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything—the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury rowhouse in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. But when Bree comes downstairs their final morning, she’s shocked. There’s a stranger laying dead in the foyer, and Ty is nowhere to be found.A Black woman alone in a new city, Bree is stranded and out of her depth—especially when it becomes clear the dead woman is none other than Janelle Beckett, the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with. There’s only one person Bree can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past. As the police and a social media mob close in, all looking for #JusticeForJanelle, Bree realizes that the only way she can help Ty—or herself—is to figure out what really happened that last night.But when people only see what they want to see, can she uncover the truth hiding in plain sight?and makes them targets of random people who are out for blood and it’s all the more upsetting. It combines the already insidious racist implications of the ‘missing white woman syndrome’ (see the title) and how that kind of case gets ALL the focus while victims of color are all too often ignored, with a misguided mob of people who take a real tragedy and try to make themselves a part of it for clout, attention, or to feel like they are doing SOMETHING by targeting two Black people. It would be SO EASY to make this kind of commentary about true crime and social media feel well meaning and correct but SO clunky and preachy that it’s just obnoxious, as we have seen this kind of thing before (looking at you, “Black Christmas” 2019). But Garrett nails the tone, captures the gravity of it, and finds the nuance and trusts her readers to be able to parse it out without having to spoon feed it. Apparently this is a fine line to walk for some, but Garrett succeeds.One quibble that I will note because it probably explains the lower rating number after all the well earned praise: the ending. It’s not a bad ending by any means, but it did feel a bit rushed and anticlimactic because of it. I also would have perhaps liked a little bit more time to see some of the fallout of how it all shook out. I never like feeling super rushed in a thriller.But that’s just a quibble! Overall I enjoyed “Missing White Woman” quite a bit. It’s engaging and addicting, and with summer coming up and a need for vacation reads about to skyrocket, this is a good one to keep in mind!

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