The Last Child (Johnny Merrimon, #1) in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jun 04, 2015 Srividya Vijapure rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: world-lit, kindle-owned, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, world-lit-2016, 2016-reading-challenge, tower-teams-iv, mystery-thrillers

I am sure by now all of you would be acquainted with my best buddy Manju. She is one person who loves me unconditionally and recommends me gems that I always ignore until I can no longer do so and once I finish reading, I wonder why I ignored it for so long. This little gem is also one of her recommendations, which suffered a similar plight. Needless to say, I finished it and patted myself on my back saying ‘it’s better late than never’. I just hope that I will break this trend and read more qui I am sure by now all of you would be acquainted with my best buddy Manju. She is one person who loves me unconditionally and recommends me gems that I always ignore until I can no longer do so and once I finish reading, I wonder why I ignored it for so long. This little gem is also one of her recommendations, which suffered a similar plight. Needless to say, I finished it and patted myself on my back saying ‘it’s better late than never’. I just hope that I will break this trend and read more quickly before she tires of recommending books to me.

While I do tend to be lazy getting to recommended books, this one was slightly different. It dealt with a subject that I was loathe to read. Pedophilia is not an easy subject to read about, even if it were only in fiction. Being a mother of a nine year old daughter, the subject scares me more than anything else. And this book deals with a disappearance of a child, it deals with pedophiliacs and the occurrence of child murders, not really a happy subject or even one where you can have a balanced view. Nevertheless, I couldn’t delay it further and chose to read it and I did like this book immensely. One point in its favour would be the fact that it dealt with the suspense and thrills surrounding the investigation than actual incidents of kidnapping and murder. Had it been gory or even a true account, I would have probably stopped reading it, I simply don’t have it in me to read such books.

Anyway, the story is pretty straightforward, a thirteen year old girl has disappeared and even after one year there is no trace of where she went or who got her or even if she is alive. Her twin brother feels that she is alive or at least feels that he will know if she were dead and therefore continues to search for her despite a year going by without any clue. The detective handling the case is still on the lookout, despite it being a cold case, as he feels that there is more to it than a mere disappearance. Their lives, that of the brother as well as the detective, are changed forever after this disappearance. Where the boy lives merely to find what happened to his sister, the detective tries to drown his sorrows at failing in this case by doing more work, so much so that he has used up all his markers at work and with his family. His wife leaves him because of his work and his son barely speaks to him. Similarly, the boy’s mother, unable to bear the loss of her child, turns to drugs and alcohol to handle the pain, leaving the boy alone and unsupervised.

While these facts are really noteworthy, as in you can find them in almost all books related to murder mysteries and suspense thrillers, what sets this book apart from the rest is the sheer raw emotion that flows throughout the book. Be it Johnny or Detective Clyde Hunt or even Johnny’s friend Jack and all the other characters that guide you through the pages of this book; they are all highly emotive characters and the author has brought out their anguish and pain beautifully through his prose. Right from the first sentence, John Hart, leads you through this whole saga, complete with a few red herrings and wonderful twists and turns, without losing grasp of the plot or dithering in any manner. With supreme confidence and elegiac and heart wrenching scenes, he brings to you Johnny’s journey to find his sister. He tugs at your tear buds constantly, making you want to rush to Johnny’s aid and to become Detective Clyde Hunt’s confidante and assistant. The sheer drama is so strikingly set that you can’t help but be a part of it. However, at no point does the author veer towards the melodramatic or even the contrived. It is honest human emotion at its core.

Characters, both the main as well as supporting ones, are excellently cast and developed throughout the book. Some you hate, some you love and there are some for whom you feel a huge amount of pity. The author makes you cross that thin line between pity and sympathy many a times in this book, making you wonder as to what exactly is the emotion you feel and what is it that you should feel. Two people in this category that stand out are Johnny’s mother and his best friend Jack. I hated Johnny’s mother in the beginning for being weak and yet I understood her pain and inability to cope, which then made me pity her. The author beautifully directs you to experience a wide range of emotions through his characters, their stories and their experiences, so much so that you can’t hate them even if you wanted to.

The suspense is the core element of this book. And I have to give the author full marks for sustaining that suspense till the very end. He included a few red herrings in his tale, which merely enhanced the thrill factor. The links between each character and each scene has been wonderfully tied up towards the end, leaving no questions in your mind. It could be said that the end was really facile in its execution but then I believe the author wanted to send the message of ‘it’s usually the simple things that lead to greater ones’, which is true of everything, including crime and I, for one, was really happy with it.

In short, this book has everything that one wants in a thriller – good writing, believable characters, strong emotions, excellent thrill factor and finally sustained suspense till the very end. I would definitely recommend it to all, especially if you are someone who likes good thrillers.
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Jun 22, 2017 Maggie Shanley rated it really liked it

This was an intense book that suckered me in and I could not leave it alone. When 12-year-old Alyssa goes missing her family and community is torn apart. Johnny, her twin brother cannot give up on her and in the year since she has gone missing he has embarked on a dangerous mission to find his sister.

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Aug 23, 2023 Chaitra rated it it was ok

Shelves: mystery, first-of-a-series, police-procedural, edgar-winners, child-in-peril

I've got nothing but contempt for the cop in this story. I would have said the same of the mom, but at least she's grieving the loss of her daughter and her husband, and as such incapable of separating that. But the cop doesn't seem to have done any work at all, other than creeping on the mom. ...more

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