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John Hart's THE LAST CHILD drew me in because it seemed to focus elsewhere. I don't/can't read stories about children-in-jeopardy. I don't get the appeal of them. But in this book, Hart was focusing on what comes after. The child was long gone, and the story seemed to focus on the effects after the event, and how they affected a young boy. The boy, in fact, was the missing girl's twin. How such monstrous events affect the family and the community is interesting to look at, especially in a small community. Suddenly, neighbors wonder if they can trust each other. Cops look inept, nothing is ever the same. This is John Hart's third book and I thought that finally here was my chance to understand this author's appeal. And it was there, to a point. And then I stopped and hit a very solid brick wall because I realized that almost every character was not real to me. The boy, Johnny Merrimon, was very well imagined - his thinking, his ideas, his daily life was real and well drawn by the author. But time after time, it seemed to me that Hart had used up all his reality on Johnny and there was nothing left so he plugged in clichés. And the fear that these people all feel because one rich man owns the town. He is a bully, a revolting, abusive swaggering grotesquerie of a man and everyone cringes and tugs their forelocks because he owns a lot of property. And that's all he is - Mr Bad Man. Somehow the talent this author has needs to be evened out a little. There was a lot of potential in this book, which offers a story of an obsessed child, who is trying to find his stolen sister and the father who walked away, a child who wants his family back. And few people will listen - his mother lives in a haze of suicidal misery and abuse, the cop who never found the girl hands over business cards to the kid practically daily and suffers guilt, the town is full of bullies and a standard cast of characters. And that's where it falls apart. In other words, THE LAST CHILD ends up being predictable in too many ways because the author used shortcuts. He used predictable villains, so that of course you react a certain way, and offers too many cops who are a) obsessed with their careers so they don't see their families OR b) obsessed with success, either in their own career or in one case getting the son into college so he'll be a football hero. If Hart could have written all of his book at the level at which he wrote Johnny Merimon, this mystery would be very good indeed. Instead, I found myself skipping ahead to avoid the stuff I knew was coming. It seemed like a waste of obvious talent to me. I was dismayed and baffled to realize that a year ago, this author's DOWN RIVER won the Edgar for "best novel". How could I be so off the mark? This award comes from a jury of mystery authors who think it was the best crime/mystery novel published that year. And here I am saying "cliché, trite, predictable." It does not feel good, let me tell you. But I can't and won't take any of it back. I don't think this is a great example of a mystery.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, August 2009
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