Review: YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME by Robert Wilson ( Charles Boxer #2)

Description/Synopsis: 

Wilson’s protagonist, Charles Boxer, is a British kidnapping consultant with a dark core and a tendency toward revenge. Capital Punishment, which precedes YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME, debuted in the US in 2013 with starred reviews from PW, Library Journal, and Booklist. The Wall Street Journal’s Tom Nolan called it “crackerjack”. It was shortlisted for the Ian Flemming Steel Dagger Award. 

You Will Never Find Me follows a dual plot line; one of the storylines is a thriller and the other is a mystery. Both plot lines explore family dysfunction and the search for identity.  Charles Boxer and his ex-wife, Mercy, have struggled in bringing up their teenage daughter, Amy. Between his long absences working and Mercy’s long hours on the job as a detective in the London kidnapping unit, Amy has grown into a willful and delinquent teen. In the ultimate act of rebellion, Amy runs away and taunts her parents with a note proclaiming they will never find her.  But instead, a gruesome murder and a mistaken identity make it imperative that Boxer use all his skill to find his daughter before a gang of drug traffickers get to her.  Meanwhile, Mercy can’t face her grief over Amy’s disappearance so she throws herself into the kidnapping investigation of a young Russian boy in London. Step by step, these two narratives unfold keeping readers on the edge of their seats.

Review: YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME by Robert Wilson (CHARLES BOXER #2)

An exceptional thriller, not a fast read, but very much worth the reader's attention, YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME is at heart the story of a rebellious adolescent struggling against parental absence on one hand (due to danger, violence, and global travel) and a stern disciplinary parent (raised by a Ghanaian police chief father), so in one sense it is a coming-of-age tale. And oh, what this adolescent undergoes in process! But more, the novel deeply characterizes its protagonists, as well as secondary characters. It examines contemporary global balance, politics, and socio economy, especially examining Britain, Spain, and a close observation of the great Russian bear. YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME is deeply absorbing. I'm eager to read the first in the series, and the author's other novels.