The Last Place You D Look

Every day people go missing. Some run away, some are kidnapped, some are the victims of foul play. This book examines true stories of missing persons and their families alongside the various resources available to them.

Glen Chilton returns with another scientific quest, this time to seek out species ill-advisedly introduced into foreign environments. Chilton visits Ireland to witness how rhododendrons, an ornamental plant that escaped a private garden, now threaten to choke out the last of the great oak forests of the United Kingdom. He escapes blood-thirsty midges and a murderous Hungarian architect while visiting a colony of forgotten Scottish wallabies; finds out how termites, brought in on packing crates after WWII, contributed to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; dives with turtles in North Queensland; and dodges both crocodiles and big guns in the eucalyptus forests of Ethiopia. Along the way, Chilton never turns down the opportunity to share a few pints with eccentric locals, often finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Roxane is a wonderfully complex character...This is a remarkably accomplished debut mystery, with sensitive character development and a heart-stopping denouement. Let's hope there are more Roxane Weary novels on the way."—Booklist (starred review) 2018 Shamus Award Winner and Best First Novel Nominee for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, The Last Place You Look is a head-on collision between an allegedly closed case and a tenacious, troubled private investigator who doesn't know when to quit. Nobody knows what happened to Sarah Cook. The beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton—black and from the wrong side of the tracks—was convicted of the murders and is now on death row. Though he’s maintained his innocence all along, the clock is running out. His execution is only weeks away when his devoted sister insists she spied Sarah at an area gas station. Willing to try anything, she hires PI Roxane Weary to look at the case and see if she can locate Sarah. Brad might be in a bad way, but private investigator Roxane Weary isn’t doing so hot herself. Still reeling from the recent death of her cop father in the line of duty, her main way of dealing with her grief has been working as little and drinking as much as possible. But Roxane finds herself drawn in to the story of Sarah's vanishing act, especially when she links the disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. The stakes get higher as Roxane discovers that the two girls may not be the only beautiful blonde teenagers who’ve turned up missing or dead. As her investigation gets darker and darker, Roxane will have to risk everything to find the truth. Lives depend on her cracking this case—hers included.