Title: Missing persons
First published: 1981
Description: Missing Persons is a major novel of contemporary suspense and horror, combining the shock and tension of A Stranger Is Watching with the gritty realism of The Blue Knight - a story of terror, loss, and love that unlocks the nightmares lurking behind the façades of ordinary lives.

Could it happen to you? Severn Gamble's wife walks into the Justice Building of a major Northwestern city to pick up some typing - and never comes out. ("Margot?") No one has seen her. ("Margot!") She has disappeared. ("Margot!") And the nightmare begins.

Gamble starts to hunt for her, joined by two police officers - Johnny Boon, case hardened, cynical, and with a wife who's just walked out on him; and Tally Wickham, young, pretty, smartass, and as compatible with Boon as oil and water. Together and separately the three of them undertake a search for Margot Gamble, a search that soon becomes obsessional, as others begin disappearing, too, beginning with a child and ending no one knows where. "God, please God, let her be alive. And God...let her not be in pain...."

Never faltering, thick with vivid characterization, and building to one of the most terrifying climaxes in years, Missing Persons is a new masterpiece of suspense, a novel to hear and remember and dream about on dark nights.
Subjects: Large type books