Two Girls Down: A Novel (An Alice Vega Novel Book 1)
Back Cover Description:
When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.
With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.
[Minor spoilers throughout:]
Lee’s Preview: This dark thriller page-turner features a complex mystery and engaging characters.
What I liked:
This is a classic mystery in the best sense of the word. What Louisa Luna does so well is the doling out of information. Every clue leads to another clue, another suspect, another revelation. The book was fast-paced and very addictive, though dark and cynical, which is understandable, given the subject matter.
The book doesn’t waste time, with a short sequence where Jamie, the mother, is on the way to a birthday party with her two girls, 10-year-old Kylie and 8-year-old Bailey. There’s a great fake-out where the girls stay at a gas station bathroom too long - but the mom finds them quickly. Then she goes into a department store - and when she comes back, they’re gone.
The growing dread is played up so well, as the flawed but not completely incompetent police force don’t have enough leads early on, so Jamie’s aunt engages the services of Alice Vega, a brilliant tracker and PI. Alice is as complicated as she is smart. She’s not afraid to use violence to get what she wants, and she’s haunted by former cases that went sideways. Joining her is Max Caplan, a divorced former police officer turned PI doing mostly adultery cases. Alice Vega engages him in helping with the case since they have limited time to find the girls before the trail gets cold.
The two have a great dynamic - they work together well, but Alice’s gung-ho boldness is tempered nicely by Max Caplan’s more thoughtful approach. Max also has a sweet relationship with his teenage daughter.
Jamie is also wonderfully unhinged as the mother who starts unraveling as the time ticks away and the girls still haven’t been found. There is a nice “rogues’ gallery” of suspects until the final culprit is revealed. I do think there’s an expectation of the genre that the final reveal will be especially chilling and dark, and that is definitely the case.
What I didn’t like:
I really hate to admit this, but the romantic tension was not well handled. It’s almost an afterthought, brought up a couple of times and then dropped, and finally, there’s a kiss at the worst possible moment. Either there needs to be a stronger emphasis on their attraction, or the whole romantic subplot needs to be dropped.
I’m personally not a fan of profanity, but for the genre, I know it’s to be expected. Sometimes the excessiveness of the cursing can be a little distracting
While I firmly believe that familiar tropes of the genre aren’t bad, the execution of those tropes that either work or don’t, sometimes the beats Luna hits in the latter half feel a little cliché. Like she tries to hit those expected beats while not giving enough of a different take on the scene. It’s still very well-written and very tense, though.
Alice Vega sometimes is a little too unhinged in her violence against low-lifes who are initially unwilling to cooperate. I know she’s the yin to Caplan’s yang, but her crutch of “not a police officer” was used one too many times in explaining Vega’s actions.
Content Rating: Rated R for frank sexual discussions including abuse (on-page depictions of sexual abuse are actually kept to a minimum - with the exception of one flashback scene where Vega finds an abused young boy that is the worst in disturbing and disgusting), plus action violence, drug use, and profanity throughout. This book was definitely written for adults.
Overall Review: It’s a dark and cynical book, but it’s absolutely a page-turner. I found it addicting and I finished it quickly, but if something so disturbing is not your thing (if you’re more of a cozy mystery person, for example), then I do not recommend it. Go in with caution, but if dark thrillers are your thing, it’ll probably grip you to the last page.
