Middle of the Night
          

                              by Riley Sager

Ethan Marsh should have had an idyllic childhood. He was raised in a quiet little cul-de-sac in New Jersey with loving parents. But 30-years ago when he was just ten, Ethan and his best friend Billy were camping out in his backyard when someone cut the tent open with a knife and supposedly kidnapped Billy who was never seen again.

Ethan has returned to his old home only to be plagued by nightmares and sleeplessness. Now that he is back in his old neighborhood he is haunted by his friend’s disappearance and the guilt he feels. He wonders why they took Billy and not him. When he is up late at night obsessing about the past, he sees his neighbors’ motion activated lights go on and off mysteriously as if someone is roaming the neighborhood. He starts finding mysterious things left in his yard that seem tied to Billy. Is the kidnapper back or is Billy’s ghost trying to tell him something?

Although 30 years has past, almost everyone that lived in the area when Billy disappeared still live on the small cul-de-sac. Ethan is driven to try to find answers to Billy’s disappearance and starts asking questions of those neighbors and digging into the past. He quickly finds that digging into the past is painful and dangerous. One of the places that Billy could have gone or been taken to is the wooded area behind Ethan’s house. Just at the outer edge of those woods is a mysterious research facility where Ethan finds out that his mother once worked. He becomes intrigued with the facility and starts digging into its past which could be an error in judgement.

The novel jumps between the present and the past where we get to know a lot more about Billy’s and Ethan’s relationships. The point of view (POV) also changes so that find out more about the events leading up to the disappearance through the eyes of Ethan, Billy, their mothers, and other kids in the neighborhood. Some of those kids are now grownups and still living next door to Ethan including Russ who is now a family man, Ashley who used to babysit Ethan, Ragesh Patel who was known for being a bully and is now a police officer. Ethan questions and badgers everyone who might know anything or be involved in any way until he starts finding out information that he never knew before. As he heads closer to the truth, he finds danger and truths that he may wish he had never uncovered.

Issues regarding secrets, lies, grief, and friendship abound in Riley Sager’s latest thriller.

I like the fact that the book felt real and the emotions understandable. Seeing a ghost is something that happens to people who are under great emotional stress and who feel guilt or just the loss of that person. I felt for Ethan and how haunted he was by the past and all the unanswered questions of that past. It’s not always possible to find all the answers or to quickly come to terms with loss even when you find answers. I’ve talked in the past about the complexity of friendships, and this is certainly the case here. Add in the complexity of dealing with grief and I can understand how this haunted him for over 30 years. He had so many unanswered questions. People often think that grief can be dealt with in a few weeks or a few months. The truth is that sometimes it takes years and sometimes you never fully heal.

This mystery just came out in June and his next book is scheduled for some time next year and should be called “With a Vengeance.”