The Mysteries – Lisa Tuttle

Release date: September 4th, 2014
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Age Group: Adult
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

A blend of mystery, thriller and fantasy that will leave you looking over your shoulder.

Laura Lensky’s daughter, Peri, has been missing for two years. For the police it’s a closed case – she wanted to run away – but for her mother and boyfriend, Henry, it’s a different story. When Laura hires private investigator Ian Kennedy, it is a last-ditch attempt to find her daughter before she leaves for America. Drawn in by strange parallels to an obscure Celtic myth and his first, almost unexplainable case, Ian takes the job. But his beliefs are about to be stretched to their limit – there are darker and more devious forces at work here than any of them imagined.

Review:

What to expect from a book that is called ‘The Mysteries’? Something mysterious most likely. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed on that part. This book is woven together with questions and riddles. That and the interesting storyline kept me glued to the pages of this book ‘till the very end.

Ian Kennedy is a private detective specialised in missing persons. He has always had a particular interest in this field because of the disappearance of his own father when he was nine years old. Throughout the book we learn more about his choice for this profession. He normally deals with runaway teens or crimes of passion, but his last case may prove to be something else entirely. Peri has been missing for 2 years, vanished without a trace. The more Ian learns about the details of the case, the more they remind him of his very first case. How will he tell Peri’s mother that he can find strong resemblances between her daughter’s disappearance and a Celtic myth?

Throughout the book Tuttle lets us get a glimpse of other cases of disappearances as little intermezzos. These were a perfect addition to the book, spicing the already intriguing storyline with that little bit extra. Now, this might sound a bit weird, but disappearances have always fascinated me. With a mind that has been conditioned by reading Fantasy from a very young age, it’s easy to make the leap to search something more behind these cases. I think it’s fascinating how some things can never be explained and I always wonder why that is. That’s why I particularly loved the anecdotes about people mysteriously disappearing in the past. These little intermezzos start as unresolved, mysterious disappearances, but later on we get to read some supernatural explanations and actually some happy endings.

Ian’s investigation doesn’t exactly lead where you’d think it would. It quickly takes a turn for the weird the deeper he digs. Along the way he also meets some interesting individuals who challenge his beliefs and make him rethink the world he lives in.
Ian as a character had a rather dull personality. I didn’t really connect with him or any of the other characters as profoundly as I’d liked. Normally the characters and my connection with them is one of the most important things for me to enjoy a book. Here, however, the story itself fascinated me enough to keep reading and to ultimately really like the book. This is for a big part due to the thematic, which is exactly my cup of tea.

The ending is, quite fittingly, mysterious. It is a very open ending that leaves the reader the freedom to fill in what they would want to happen to the protagonist. I’m not usually a fan of open endings, but it seemed to fit perfectly here, so it didn’t bother me at all this time. ‘The Mysteries’ is a perfect mix between the better detective novel and subtle Fantasy/Folklore. Though different from what I expected at first, the book still managed to captivate me.