Twenty-something Michael Sutton comes to Kinsey with a memory from 20 years earlier, a memory he thinks is a clue to the unsolved disappearance of a little girl in Santa Teresa. Despite being paid for only one day's work and despite the fact that his sister and brother provide evidence discrediting Michael's memory, Kinsey works the case doggedly. Through chapters from the perspective of several other characters--some set in the 1960s, some in 1988 when the story told in the book takes place--readers know who the guilty parties are long before Kinsey does. So the mystery lies in how Kinsey will find the evidence to prove who the culprits were--and it's enough to keep you reading.
Grafton also provides more of Kinsey's family backstory, which she began unraveling several volumes ago. As some aspects of what she learns about her history raise more questions than answers, the last five books in the series are bound to fill in even more details.
I'm not sure what the significance of the title is--if there was an explanation, I missed it. Once an author starts one of these naming conventions, it must be difficult to keep them going.
Favorite passage:
Snapshots tell a story, not always in obvious ways but taken as a whole. Faces appear and disappear. Relationships form and fall apart.
(It's not the most beautiful writing--are mysteries really about the language?--but the idea of photos telling a story about what doesn't last, what comes and goes has me thinking. If I looked at my photos, what friends would have come and gone [besides the ex-husband, of course] and why would they have disappeared from my life?)
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