Losing a child is the worst horror a person can endure, so it’s no surprise that mystery writers, challenged to raise the stakes as high as possible, often center their stories around missing or murdered children. Usually those children are literal children, though, and the action is fresh. Bestselling mystery author Kate White plays against these tropes in her latest offering, I Came Back for You. Bree Winters’s daughter Melanie was a college student ten years ago when she was murdered by a serial killer. But the killer has just died, and his deathbed confession revealed that Melanie was not one of his victims. Is ten years later too late to learn the real killer?
Bree has moved on literally if not figuratively. Divorced from Melanie’s father Logan (he cheated on her after their daughter died), Bree has moved to Uruguay with her fiancé Sebastian. They live on a farm and she takes freelance book editing projects. But one night, while Sebastian is out of town, Logan shows up. He gives her the news that Melanie’s killer has died claiming he didn’t kill her, and invites her back to Melanie’s college in upstate New York, where he is funding a scholarship in Melanie’s name. Desperate to learn the truth about what happened to her daughter, Bree agrees.
With a ten-year gap from the murder to the story, author White is challenged to create tension and suspense in the novel. It’s a very talky book—it starts with Logan showing up in the middle of the night at Bree’s house and explaining everything that’s happened with Melanie’s killer’s anti-confession. Later Bree needs to explain things to Sebastian, then there’s meetings with college officials and police officers. White has a habit of breaking chapters in the middle of these conversations to create suspense, but the emotion feels artificial.
Bree’s emotional stakes are well-developed, though. She still has messy, complicated feelings for Logan, and when his fiancée shows up, things get sticky. And her feelings about Melanie are complicated by the fact that the two were not close many times during the young woman’s life, including at the time of her death. Unfortunately, Bree’s distance from Melanie means it’s impossible for readers to get a strong feeling for the character, and that lessens interest in who really killed her.
The mystery itself is well plotted, almost a locked room story, with a limited number of characters who could have killed Melanie. Could it be her ex-boyfriend Jack, whom Melanie had dumped just prior to her murder? Or her English professor, who seems too interested in other college co-eds? As Bree investigates, the danger seems close. Ultimately, White provides a master class in misdirection, setting up one character as a perfect red herring while still giving readers the clues they need to solve the mystery.
With most mystery protagonists being younger women with younger children, it was refreshing to read a book featuring an older heroine with an adult daughter with a private life of her own. While I Came Back For You has a few missteps, it’s still an enjoyable read.
Thanks to Megan Beatie Communications for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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