Caroline de Costa
Auteur van DICK: A Guide to the Penis for Men and Women
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Werken van Caroline de Costa
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Algemene kennis
Leden
Besprekingen
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 10
- Leden
- 26
- Populariteit
- #495,361
- Waardering
- 3.3
- Besprekingen
- 4
- ISBNs
- 26
- Talen
- 1
Setting something like this in a small community has provided de Costa with a real opportunity for a closed room styled mystery, enhanced by the interwoven thread lines in a single family. As is always the way with these sorts of disappearances, the rumour mill in small towns provides heaps of possible scenarios, and much finger pointing - from the implications of poor mothering, question marks over the girl's father, the weird coincidence of the missing fiancée and a heap of possible motives. The official line on Yasmin's disappearance was that she was washed away when sudden rain flooded the picnic ground she was playing in, but the complication has always been that her mother left her supposedly supervised by an unknown person for a while, whilst helping with an injured boy. The lack of a body has never helped that conclusion, although it's Cairns, Queensland and there are always crocodiles to blame. Either way, Diamond finds herself digging around in both disappearances when the terms of Todd's will become well known and higher-ups in the Police get a bit nervous about the PR implications.
An interesting idea for a cold case investigation then, unfortunately not best served by the structure of the novel overall. The author here has a lot of worthwhile stuff to say about stereotypes of Indigenous Australians, on environmental issues, heavy-handed policing and a bunch of other social issues. The problem is that many chapters in the novel come across as mini-lectures on individual subjects, or are so heavily infested with foreshadowing that it's difficult to stay with it too frequently. There's also too many times when the side-alleys of lecture and points to be made simply overwhelm advancement of the plot and it's hard to come away from MISSING PIECES without wondering if there was a lot more novel here than actual story.
There's plenty of potential in Cass Diamond as a central character, so having really liked this idea of the intersecting cold cases as a plot device, here's hoping the third outing in this series achieves a better balance.
https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/missing-pieces-caroline-de-costa… (meer)