The Missing by C.L.Taylor.

                The Missing by C.L.Taylor.

"He looks so broken, so contrite, so deeply ashamed that my heart twists in my chest. One of my sons is missing and the other is falling apart in front of my eyes. I have never felt so powerless or so impotent in my life."

Be prepared to be shaken out of your comfort zone. Fractured families, a spectrum of emotions; fear, anger, guilt and loss. This is serious stuff and this is what Cally Taylor excels at. The plot is chilling and the truth devastating and the characters are believable throughout. No matter how well we think we know our family and friends that can change with discoveries of mind-numbing secrets that could explode in our faces, leaving us scarred for life. Ask Claire Wilkinson.

Claire Wilkinson is the main character, narrating most of the account. Taylor informs us: "I wanted to explore what would happen when Claire, a control freak by nature, realized she no longer knew the son she'd nurtured for so many years. I wanted to see how she'd react when her family began to fall apart." It sounds cruel especially when  we understand what she has suffered and once the secrets unravel, we see the family disintegrate before her eyes. Taylor presents a parent's worst nightmare-the disappearance of a child with all the guilt that causes a vulnerable family to fall apart, to make gripping reading.

We have a two-time frame, going back a year interspersed with the present. The beginning has a contemporary style using Whatsapp conversation or text talk between two anonymous characters going back to the 5th February 2015. Jackdaw44 and ICE9. The former sets a maudlin tone: "Would you rather drown in a river or burn in a fire?" I know what my answer would be. Neither. To be asked if you would cry at his funeral seems rather morbid doesn't it? An intriguing start. This text talk continues throughout to show disillusioned people, grossly unhappy with their lives. It's up to you to work out the connection with the main plot.

It is now the 5th August 2015 and we are made aware of the second tv appeal for the Wilkinsons, Claire and husband, Mark. The golden boy, Jake, 19 still lives at home with his parents and girlfriend Kira who moved into the family home 18 months ago to escape from her own fractured family: an alcoholic mother who was physically and verbally abusive and living with the memory of a father who committed suicide. This appeal is more low-key after Billy's disappearance six months earlier. It takes place in a small conference room in the basement of the town hall with just half a dozen journalists and photographers present. D.S.Forbes has advised Claire to make the appeal because the public tend to respond more favourably to a mother's loss.

We soon learn that her youngest son, Billy, 15, skived school and was proving to be rebellious and challenging at home as well as at school. He was a master of graffiti leaving his trademark DStroy wherever he went. He craved infamy.

"His disappearance has left a hole in our family that nothing can fill."

Claire is hopeful at the start of the novel that Billy will return and that everything can go back to being normal. Too much wishful thinking. However, the appeal did not turn out well and there were negative comments in the press, disturbing and alarming: "They seem like a perfectly normal family but you have to wonder whether someone knows more about Billy's disappearance than they're letting on."

For Claire, the stress and guilt prove too much and she suffers frequent blackouts, waking up in strange places creating confusion and anxiety. Taylor's interest in abnormal psychology is explored here. She calls them fugues or dissociative amnesia, dark and foggy thoughts. She finds herself in Weston Super Mare during one of these blackouts, a lost and frightened soul. As she says: "There's a black void where my memory should be."

Despondent. Impotent. Claire singlehandedly goes off searching for her son, frequenting dangerous places with drop-outs:"I can't just sit at home doing nothing. I've started to see him everywhere I go." Images of a body slumped on the bonnet of her car, a thumping sound as it hits the car, a loud crack and then being showered with glass. Claire hallucinates as she sees his lifeless body believing that she might have killed him. D.S.Forbes drops a bombshell one day; Jason Davies has confessed to abducting Billy and murdering him. He confessed this to his cellmate. It is now left for the police to investigate and discover the truth. A devastating setback naturally.

Claire agrees to see a psychotherapist to deal with her fugues. She admits to Sonia that her worst fear is that someone she knows hurt Billy. Her main suspect is her husband Mark and finding out some of his dark secrets seems to justify her suspicions. Would Mark hurt even kill Billy, his own son? Finding a family photo album hidden in the garage with Mark's face blacked out disturbed her. Who would do this? Who hated Mark? Had Billy done this? We discover more disturbing revelations from Jake culminating in a disturbing text that Claire discovers accidentally:"I know you were sleeping with Billy. I know you were responsible for his disappearance. And so do the police." The text is sent, but who is the recipient and will Claire discover what happened to her son? Is Billy alive or has he been murdered?

"No-one does broken families and friendships like Cally Taylor and "The Missing" is no exception." Sarah Hilary.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Publisher: Avon-a division of Harper Collins. ISBN:13: 978-0-00-811805-1.

Copyright 2016. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.