Review: Missing

Missing by James Patterson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After the last two "Private" books included Jack Morgan as a main character in his overseas offices, this one is back to being more of a standalone as Jack's involvement is pretty much limited to calling Craig Guisto at the Sydney office and asking him to look into the disappearance of long-time client and friend Eliza Moss's missing father, Eric.

Businessman Moss is not the only Private client involved in a disappearance, however. After Craig reluctantly agrees to perform a background check at the request of a walk-in client on a woman they are considering to be a surrogate mother, not only does the surrogate go missing, so does the infant she is babysitting at the time. But when her body is found, she is not the same woman the clients met with in hopes of realizing their dreams of parenthood.

I admit I didn't pay as close of attention to this one as I did some of the others. I just don't find the books without Jack and his L.A. team to be as interesting, even though these characters were previously introduced in the other book set in Australia. I actually had to listen to the last half hour twice and I'm still not entirely sure what exactly happened. It wasn't a complicated plot twist by any means, I just missed something I didn't care enough to go back and figure out.

I did laugh at the beginning when Craig wondered to himself just how good of a "friend" Eliza was to Jack. Jack is quite the ladies man after all! The animosity between Craig and his cousin, police chief Mark, was back but at least it was acknowledged that Craig didn't know why Mark wasn't happy with him this time (because it's a requirement the head of Private and the head of police hate each other, usually due to the untimely death of someone). And this one didn't repeat a previously used story line, so bonus points there.


(This book is also published under the name "Private: Sydney").

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