Alexandra, Gone
McPartlin (Pack up the Moon) builds a thin novel around a missing person and the music she adored. After 36-year-old Alexandra Kavanagh disappears while running an errand in Dublin, her bereft husband, Tom, begins a small but determined effort to find her until a chance encounter with Jane Moore, Alexandra's childhood friend, helps Tom to galvanize his search efforts. With assistance from Jane's artist sister, Elle, and Web designer Leslie, Tom and Jane mount a national campaign, but as the search turns up dead end after dead end, the quartet finds that life continues apace: Jane and Elle resolve traumas and grievances, Leslie reaches out to new friends, and Tom learns to let go of his grief. Although McPartlin's sense of humor helps these unlikely bonds of friendship to come to life, the plot is light on the suspense and pathos one might expect from a missing-person story, and since Alexandra is often conveyed in such a roundabout way—often by use of her favorite song lyrics—her disappearance, while central, is at odds with her incidental presence.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.