The Last Child

John Hart's crime thriller The Last Child is a great read! I should have known when Jeffery Deaver was one of the people who endorsed the novel that it would be a book I could not put down.

Full of twists and turns in the plot, Hart weaves together the story of Johnny Merrimon, a thirteen year old boy whose twin sister disappeared a year ago. Johnny's best friend, Jack, is the only eye-witness to Alyssa's last known moment--the moment she approached the white van that stopped beside her on her walk home from the library. The moment that changed everything about Johnny Merrimon's life.

His mother blamed his father for failing to pick Alyssa up at the library. Unable to cope with shouldering the blame and bitter resentment from his wife, Johnny's dad abandoned them. The town's richest bully comes to his mother's "rescue" by providing a run-down rental home and all the booze and pills she needs to slip away from the pain of life into a haze of oblivion, addiction, and abuse. Johnny, trapped in the middle, is the fragile thread holding everything together.

Methodical, jaded, and determined to find out what happened to his sister at any cost, Johnny uncovers more than he bargained for when he witnesses the murder of a local college professor who's dying words to Johnny are "I know where she is. The girl who was taken."

If you are a fan of fast-paced, who-dun-it thrillers, you will love this book. As a huge fan of Jeffery Deaver, I am so glad to find someone who does an equally excellent job with the crime thriller genre.

Hart kept me on the edge of my seat with The Last Child. I found myself reading as fast as I could to see if my own hunches about the characters and their fate would be accurate or not. I thoroughly enjoyed the twists in the story as well as the characters. I will read more by this author I'm so glad to have discovered. I think it will be a great discussion at my book club meeting!