This was yet another find in the clearance section of McNally Robinson, and another two-day read for me. The characters drew me in, and the story kept me turning the pages.

Norma Fox Mazer has been a staple of my reading life for well over half of it. I own a number of her books and have read many others. The Missing Girl is the last book she wrote, unless there are some posthumous publications in the works. (I actually had no idea that she had died last year until I went looking today for her web site to add it to the list in the sidebar.)

There are five sisters, all with names that seem ridiculous but turn out to be appropriate, in one way or another. The oldest is 17, the youngest is 11. The family struggles to make ends meet, as the father is out of work and the mother is a lunch lady at a school. And then there is the man who has taken an unhealthy interest in the girls, watching them from a distance. His obsession grows, and when at last he takes action…

I couldn’t put it down, is what I mean to say. I don’t want to give anything away, so you’ll have to read it. It’s a short book, an easy read, and definitely full of suspense. My only quibble with the book is that only three of the sisters act as narrators; the other two are more backdrops to the story the other three are telling. But that’s a small thing, and somehow it works.

Oh, I put this in the ‘disability’ category because one of the sisters has some kind of developmental disorder/delay. It’s never named, but it is obvious in the way she tells her part of things and the way she is described by the other narrators. I thought she was drawn fairly realistically and in a basically matter-of-fact manner: this is how she is, no excuses, no attempts to make her more or less appealing because of or in spite of her disability, none of that. I appreciate the straightforwardness of that.