Book Report: The Mountains Wild

21. Sarah Stewart Taylor, The Mountains Wild (2020) (4/9/21)

I love a good mystery. This, however, was not one of them. At first, I found it too slow. Later, as plot twists started crowding in, the word "preposterous" kept leaping to mind. The writing itself is rather pedestrian (any character being described as tired-looking—and many were, because, oh, those police officers work hard—had a "gray face," "lined eyes," and "wrinkled clothing"). Although there are many descriptions of Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains, where most of the story takes place, they somehow never crystallized into actual, relevant places for me. It was totally unbelievable that there would still be frantic television news accounts, pretty much whenever a character encounters a TV, on a missing woman over two weeks after she disappeared. When the narrator runs into a love interest on a beach while she's out for a run, it's almost magically random. The main Irish detective always seemed to be "holding something back."

But anyway, the story: it is 2016, and Maggie, a 40-something police detective in Long Island, departs for Ireland when a clue surfaces that potentially links a newly missing young woman to Maggie's own cousin, Erin, who disappeared 23 years earlier. Possible connections to several other women, over the years vanished then discovered dead, are posited. Irish history, especially concerning the IRA, is invoked, and Irish gangsterism. Family mysteries and legacies come into play. A buried skeleton is discovered—and Erin's ID card. But the skeleton is not Erin.

The story bounces back and forth in time between 1993, when Maggie first went over to see what she could learn immediately after Erin's disappearance, and 2016. Maggie and Erin resembled each other, so whenever Maggie first meets someone who knew Erin, in whichever time frame, she is met by a "shocked" (or occasionally "frightened"), then "confused" look. Characters are introduced who seem to have had but the most glancing of relationships with Erin—but maybe they killed her? Or maybe they ran off with her, who knows? 

Throughout, we are treated to italicized interludes that narrate Maggie and Erin's youth, back when they were close as sisters, before "everything went wrong." Which I suppose, according to jacket blurbs, give the book its "incredible tenderness and emotional accuracy." 

Ultimately, everything is sorted out, with a final, and completely out-of-the-blue, twist. I don't mind a good twist, or some (not too much) suspension of disbelief, but this one... nah.

Perhaps if the same story had been in more deft hands, it might have worked. But I doubt it. In any case, I will not be seeking Sarah Stewart Taylor out again.