The Last Child
John Hart
Minotaur Books, 2009
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 978-0312359324
384 pages; $24.95

The Last Child has been nominated for a Best Novel Edgar by the Mystery Writers of America, and for good reason, too. Hart has written an exceptional novel, his best yet – even better than Down River, which won the Best Novel Edgar in 2008, and The King of Lies, which was nominated for an Edgar as the Best First Novel by an American Author in 2007. Three books and three Edgar nominations; not bad for a former criminal defense attorney.

The Last Child is about Johnny Merrimon, whose twin sister Alyssa disappeared just about a year before the novel opens. That year has wreaked havoc on his family. His father left; his mother has turned to drugs, alcohol and an abusive boyfriend who despises Johnny; and they’ve lost their home. Johnny hasn’t exactly become a juvenile delinquent, but he skips school frequently – rather amazingly keeping his grades up despite his absences. He has better things to do than attend junior high: he wants to find his sister. Witnesses say she was grabbed by a man in a white van, and Johnny is certain that the man has been holding her captive for the entire year, that she is still alive, and he is determined to find and rescue her. This means he stalks the registered sex offenders who live in his town at terrible risk to himself.

Johnny cannot bring himself to accept the help offered by Detective Clyde Hunt, a police officer who has himself never stopped looking for Alyssa, either. And it has wreaked havoc on his family, too, causing his wife to leave him and his teenage son to fend for themselves. Hunt is mesmerized by Johnny’s beautiful mother, and the tragedy of the loss of her daughter haunts him. He studies the file obsessively, but never gets any closer to finding the girl. He’s forced to watch as Johnny gets involved in worse and worse scrapes and as Johnny’s mother destroys herself in penance for losing her daughter. Nothing seems to change.

But then the anniversary of the day on which Alyssa disappeared arrives, and the worst happens: another girl is abducted. Johnny is intent on saving this girl, and believes that when he finds her, he will find his sister. His search brings him to the wrong place at the wrong time – or perhaps, ultimately, it will be the right place? – and a dying man tells him that he knows where his sister is. The tension builds as Johnny goes after a hardened pedophile, and grows even more when an escaped convict is discovered to hold a clue that Johnny hopes will help him find his sister.

The Last Child is a proverbial page-turner, but it is much more than that. Hart draws his characters well, making no one too perfect to be true and no one too evil to be real. Johnny, while older than his years, is believably so because of his circumstances, and also remains a 13-year-old boy who constructs his own fantasies about how life should work. Clyde Hunt is no magical, all-seeing, all-knowing police officer with special forensic tricks up his sleeve, but a man who makes mistakes about people, both professionally and personally. And Johnny’s best friend, Jack, cannot help but make the reader sad and mad at the same time. The plot is complex and the denouement surprising. Altogether, The Last Child is an exceptionally good mystery.