The endless search for Shawnee Connolly's sister Thea, a high school student who disappeared 16 years ago, plagues her family in Gillian French's propulsive debut adult thriller, Shaw Connolly Lives to Tell. The obsessive hunt has ruined Shaw's marriage; emotionally affected her two sons; engulfed her alcoholic father, Eddie; and alienated her youngest sister, Madison. Her trauma is acerbated by the constant phone calls from Anders Jansen, taunting that he killed Thea but refusing to say where she is buried. The frigid Maine winter enhances the chilling suspense as Anders's calls nearly push Shaw to the edge. Soon Shaw starts her own investigation and discovers secrets she didn't know about her sister. And as Shaw works the crime scenes of several seemingly unrelated fires through her job as a fingerprint analyst, she begins to realize she knows these sites and that they may be related to Thea's disappearance.
French skillfully shows how Shaw balances family life and her job with the all-consuming search, which includes weekend trips to search the woods. Eddie had Thea declared dead 10 years ago but still prints up "missing" flyers that he and Shaw regularly post. Madison refuses to help with the flyers, believing that if she stops, Shaw and Eddie will, too. Madison was only eight years old when Thea disappeared, and she's tired of "being defined by somebody who [she doesn't] even remember." French mixes a strong character development with a robust, incisive plot in Shaw Connolly Lives to Tell. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer