What Was Lost Catherine O Flynn Henry Holt Trade Paperback $14.00

If Catherine O Flynn suffers a Sophomore slump its because it's going to be very very hard to top her first novel, What Was Lost. This isn't a mystery novel in the traditional sense. It's realistic fiction with a missing child at the core. The story begins in the 1980's with Katherine Meaney, who spends her free time at Green Oaks; a newly opened shopping mall. Katherine, perhaps the least troubled soul in a book full of troubled souls, stakes out the mall working as a junior detective. One day she disappears. Her older friend Adrian, is questioned; and hounded by the press, he too disappears.

Twenty years go by. The case remains open. One day Kurt, a bored mall security guard sees a young girl on the closed circuit cameras. Several days later Lisa, a frustrated record store assistant manager, finds herself lost in the underground tunnels of the mall. She meets Kurt, making his rounds. In the tunnel's she finds a stuffed monkey; is it a clue to Katherine's disappearance? Their interest in Katherine brings them together as friends. Their friendship takes them out of life's routine. It's Catherine O Flynn's descriptive writing, her clever use of life's foibles and her realistic portrayal of our day to day dealings with those foibles that makes the reader keep turning the pages.
What Was Lost makes for a wonderful read.

Dave Biemann