First One Missing by Tammy Cohen

Woe is me! And me! And me!!

🙂 🙂 😐

A child is missing and a serial killer is on the loose, so everyone is fearing the worst. And, indeed, the worst comes to pass. The parents unenviably now have the right to join Megan’s Angels – a support group set up by the parents of previous victims. Meantime, family liaison officer Leanne Miller should be contacting the earlier victims to make sure they don’t hear about the new murder from TV, but she’s busy lying in bed feeling sorry for herself, so can’t find the energy to make the phone call. Journalist Sally Freeland, however, is full of energy – willing to do whatever it takes to get a story, including sleeping with one of the bereaved parents. But to be fair, she was drunk at the time…

I hold my hands up – this was the final straw that broke this camel’s back and inspired me to write my little pastiche the other week. It also has the distinction of being the last of this trend of misery-fest books concerning murdered children I shall ever knowingly read.

How do you top all the books that have taken us deep into the minds of bereft parents of dead children? Why, by having four sets of grief-stricken parents instead of one! Eight grieving parents, 4 child victims, a gang of scheming paedophiles, two damaged teenagers, one drunken journo and a cop with a mixed-up love life – sing to the tune of the partridge in the pear tree! I’m sorry, but this book drove me over the cliff of misery straight into the sea of hysteria! But really it’s the accumulation – book after book after book about murdered children and the reader expected to wallow in the parents’ grief. This one is no worse than most and better than many of them. I just can’t take any more…

The writing style is OK for the most part, with occasional touches of humour to give it a much needed lift, though with some pretty forced sounding swearing inserted to make it sound gritty… or fashionable… or something. But the characterisation is so clichéd. Did the journalist have to drink and sleep around? Did the female police officer really, really have to be at the centre of a love triangle? So much so, that after four child deaths, when a member of the public tells her the name of a man she thinks is the killer, what does our Leanne do? Get in touch with her boss? Put out an APB? Rush round to interview him before he can potentially kill again? No – she pops outside to phone her boyfriend! Yes, that’s why I’m happy to pay my taxes…

The book is half domestic noir from the perspective of the parents and siblings of the victims, and half police procedural via Leanne. But the investigation element is practically non-existent. I spent a large part of my time wondering how exactly Leanne filled her days. Every time she was asked to do something, she either didn’t do it or sighed as if it was all too difficult. Of course, being sexually attracted to a colleague who happens to be your ex-husband while having an affair with another man must be exhausting, poor little lamb! It’s really unfair to expect us women to be able to balance our emotional traumas with doing a professional job, isn’t it? Poor woman probably has to decide who to vote for every few years too – shame!

Tammy Cohen

The plot is probably the best part. One of the viewpoints is from a man who is in the process of grooming a child as a potential victim, but there is also a suggestion that a paedophile ring might be involved. There are enough twists along the way to keep the reader guessing and it doesn’t go much further over the credibility line than most of these books. However the huge cast of characters meant that I had great difficulty remembering which child had belonged to which set of parents and who was married to whom – there didn’t seem enough depth in the characterisation to properly differentiate amongst them all.

Overall, I was expecting much better, having greatly enjoyed Cohen’s last outing in Dying for Christmas. I’m aware that my increasing dislike of this trend for misery and dead children means that I’m slamming the book a little more than it probably deserves, but even within the domestic noir field I wouldn’t rate this one as better than average.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House Transworld.

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