Bea Reviews No One Saw by Beverly Long

Series: A.L. McKittridge #2
Read As A Stand Alone: Yes
Publisher: MIRA
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: June 30th, 2020
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Blurb from goodreads:

Nobody saw a thing. Or so they say…

Baywood police department detective A.L. McKittridge is no stranger to tough cases, but when five-year-old Emma Whitman disappears from her day care, there isn’t a single shred of evidence to go on. Neither the grandmother who dropped her off, nor the teacher whose care she was supposed to be in, can account for the missing child. There are no witnesses. No trace of where she might have gone. There’s only one thing A.L. and his partner, Rena Morgan, are sure of—somebody is lying.

With the clock ticking, A.L. and Rena are under extreme pressure as they discover their instincts are correct: all is not as it seems. The Whitmans are a family with many secrets, and A.L. and Rena will have to race to untangle a growing web of lies if they’re going to find the thread that leads them to Emma…before it’s too late.

My Thoughts:

"No One Saw" is a police procedural about a five year old girl who goes missing from her daycare. Readers, that is my recurring nightmare. Well, one of them. I teach at a daycare, an early childhood center, and just about my biggest nightmare is to have a student go missing. My co-workers and I count all day long. What do I mean? Well, each age group has a state-mandated ratio of children per teachers. Then there's the schedule of which child comes on what day and what hours. So, we all know how many children we should have and which children we should have. I can't fathom not noticing that a child had NOT arrived on their scheduled day. I can't fathom not checking at the office to see if they know if the child is coming or not. I can't fathom not contacting the parents to inquire if the child is running late or will be out. All of this is a factor in the story of Emma's disappearance. Honestly, in my very biased opinion, those teachers should be fired ASAP. You know, if they were real. I was impressed with how well Long did with the daycare setting; she did some research and it shows. Oh, she made errors of course. Honestly, that's a given in books. It's rare that an author gets it completely right. Add in the differences from state to state and errors small and big will creep in. Though, if Long's depiction is accurate, Wisconsin is a very lax state when it comes to daycare and safety.

Okay, with that topic out of the way, let's move on. "No One Saw" was gripping and frightening. It was both plausible and crazypants. I worried all the while I was reading - would Emma be found, would she be alive, would she be okay, why was that daycare so damn sloppy with their record keeping, and so on. I did figure out who was responsible, though the why took me longer; I was about a half step ahead of A.L. and Rena, lol. They were impressively thorough in their investigation and Long gave us several plausible suspects. I kept changing my mind about the guilty party but always went back to my first choice. Long wrote complex, multi-dimensional characters who were a mix of good and flawed, just like real life. While most of the story was procedural we also got to see A.L. and Rena's respective personal lives which added depth and interest without taking the focus off of the search for Emma and what happened to her. While I wanted Emma found, I didn't want the story to end.

I liked this book so much I want to get my hands on the first book and spend more time with A.L. and Rena. This is book two and works just fine as a stand alone. I just want the story and more time with the leads.