Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“'Perfect' Marjorie said, reaching down to gather up the child. 'You're a perfect little angel, aren't you?'”- Little Girl Gone, Gerry Schmitt

On a frozen night in an affluent neighborhood of Minneapolis, a baby is abducted from her home after her teenage babysitter is violently assaulted. The parents are frantic, the police are baffled, and, with the perpetrator already in the wind, the trail is getting colder by the second.

As family liaison officer with the Minneapolis P.D., it’s Afton Tangler’s job to deal with the emotional aftermath of terrible crimes—but she’s never faced a case quite as brutal as this. Each development is more heartbreaking than the last and the only lead is a collection of seemingly unrelated clues.

But, most disturbing of all, Afton begins to suspect that this case is not isolated.  Whoever did this has taken babies before—and if Afton doesn’t solve this crime soon, more children are sure to go missing . . .

I picked this novel up thinking it was a serious, dark mystery novel. All that went out the window when I opened the front page and discovered that this woman writes tea shop and scrap-booking mysteries. You know, the kind of mysteries that your grandmother might read because they're light and cozy and don't really require much thinking? In fact, they reminded me of the kind of beginning chapter book mysteries I used to read in like 3rd grade in which intrepid young detectives attempt to figure out who stole all the lollies from the elementary school's Fall Festival. No judgement or anything, I think those kinds of books are cute, but it's the titles of the books that killed me. I think my favorites were "Scones and Bones", "Crepe Factor", "Photo Finished", "Steeped in Evil", and "Sweet Tea Revenge" (the latter two sound like rejected ID channel shows, especially Sweet Tea Revenge since it reminds me of Southern Fried Homicide). Anyway, it doesn't really have much bearing on the novel except it made me giggle and also told me not to take much of the book seriously.

I do wonder why she chose to publish this novel under her real name. Maybe because she wanted to separate this book from her cozy mystery pen name. Or maybe she didn't think anyone would take this book seriously if it written by someone named Laura Childs. I can't blame her. People named Laura usually suck.

I admit though, it wasn't as fluffy I thought it would be. Sure, there is a lot of interesting descriptive choices and odd observations that bordered on the cheesy side, but hey, she's just starting out. Heck, even the cover has a bit of that since underneath the title it says "An Afton Tangler [great name by the way; sounds like a hair company] Thriller". That just strikes me as cheesy mystery, especially since most of the serious thrillers I read don't make an mention of being a part of a series, even when they are. It would be like if In the Woods had underneath it "A Dublin Murder Squad Book". 

But anyway, the novel does have some surprisingly dark points, and the climax is honestly really action-packed and, again, surprisingly dark. She doesn't take as many risks as most thriller writers do, though, the babysitter isn't raped, for instance, and the dead body of the infant they find wasn't murdered, but at the same time it's nice that a writer doesn't feel the need to throw in a lot of extra stuff for shock value. 

At the same time, for a small book it kind of drags. We have to go through every single suspect and analyze why they could have done it and why they didn't do it. This is the same tactic used by French in her books, but I'll tell you why it works there and not here. In the DMS books, we don't know who the killer was, so the analyzing of various suspects' motives feels earned. While we have a feeling that the person that actually did it won't be revealed towards the end, there always feels like the chance that she'll pull the rug out from under us. In this book, we know the kidnapper right off the bat, hell, we even get her real name and POV. It's not like in Pretty Little Things, when we get POVs from the killer but we never actually get his identity. No, we know exactly who she is, so why the red herrings? It ends up dragging the book down. I get how realistic it is to a real police investigation, but that's the reason why police procedurals don't typically reveal whodunit in the first fucking page.

Of course, in Schmitt's defense, I can see how this novel wouldn't work any other way. It needed the kidnapper's POV to explore the subject of baby selling and illegal adoptions and explain why that's the motive. So even though I was bored by the middle of the book, it kind of makes sense.

I also felt like some aspects of the characters were a bit unnecessary. Like, was it really vital to the novel to have the aggrieved dad turn out to be a dick? Seriously, the guy's infant daughter just went missing, it's find to make him a stand-up guy who's loyal and loves his wife despite being rich. You wouldn't do that to a mother who lost her daughter, would you? I also felt like Marjorie was a bit more of a comic book villain than a realistic one. She came across more as the evil, ugly queen in a Grimm fairy tale than anything else. 

Somewhere, probably in the middle, of the novel I came to look upon the characters as the devices through which the story was told as opposed to actual characters, if that makes sense. The wonderfully named Afton Tangler had didn't appear to have much to her character, and honestly, I think it worked with the story, to the point where I genuinely didn't like it if any signs of a personality came through.

The actual writing also isn't the best I ever saw. Again, there is a bit of cheese, but I found that amusing. The only major problem I can see is that she does have the tendency to add things in for convenience's sake, or just to make sense with the narrative. Like the whole bit about Dillon being sick with food poisoning- no the flu!- was pretty obviously just to get Afton in with Max. I mean, there's nothing wrong with making decisions like that for the sake of the plot, but just don't make it so obvious. 

So those are my thoughts on Little Girl Gone. Doubt I'll actually continue on with the series, but I might recommend this novel. Mostly to people like my grandmother to read in between her Agatha Christie novels. Still, this book will rest comfortably in the middle of my thriller list, since I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

6.5 out of 10