Never Coming Back by Tim Weaver

Emily Kane arrives at her sister Carrie’s house to find the front door unlocked, dinner on the table, and the family nowhere to be found—Carrie, her husband, and two daughters have disappeared. When the police turn up no leads, Emily turns to her former boyfriend David Raker, a missing persons investigator, to track the family down. As Raker pursues the case, he discovers evidence of a sinister cover-up, decades in the making and with a long trail of bodies behind it.
 

For a thriller, this novel is short on thrills, I must say. Its pacing is too slow for the genre, leaving the reader bored through exposition passages that do little to enhance the story.

The main character is a generic investigator. It would have been easy to swap him with any other detective from any other mystery novel, which is not something that should happen. He didn’t seem particularly interesting in any way and neither did the characters surrounding him, except perhaps Cornell, the antagonist. He brings a bit of life to the pages, but it’s not enough to keep readers interested.

The story would have benefitted from a better editor. It is too long, with a lot of exposition that we really don’t need. The twist-ending drags on for too many pages, giving us enough time to either figure it out first or grow too bored to care. 

All in all, this is not one I would recommend for lovers of thrillers and mysteries.