Book club discusses "The Last Child"

The book club selection for May was John Hart's third published novel, The Last Child.  The award-winning North Carolina writer uses the state again as a backdrop for crimes, mystery and family discord in the story of a missing child.


John Hart (picture from his website)

 The book focuses on 13-year-old Johnny Merrimon whose missing twin sister, Alyssa, consumes his thoughts and goals.  She suddenly disappears one day and he works relentlessly to find her. 

Convinced that he can do what his family and the police could not, Johnny fearlessly strikes out on his own.  His mother, Katherine is nearly an emotional wreck after his father quietly disappears leaving the two alone and the local detective, Clyde Hunt in charge of the investigation, is concerned but cannot find Alyssa.  That leaves Johnny and a reluctant but faithful friend Jack to travel on the road into an unknown and dangerous environment with criminals, peril and another missing child case.

Comments from the book club included:

• the novel "pulled me in."
• liked the characters and the (plot) twists
• "liked the puzzle and the solution but not the writing."
• "writing didn't flow"
•  Detective Hunt seemed too good to be true
•  a drug abuse element of the story seemed far-fetched
• liked book jacket cover with the silhouette of a boy walking a bike 

The Last Child was the 2010 best novel winner for the Edgar Award.

That's a Good Reading Choice--

When you receive positive comments about your new choice for a book to read then--you're bound to swell up inside with pride and anticipate what you have.  That was almost the case when I was sitting at work and two different women commented on my new selection for the book club.

The responses were like "that is a good really good book" and I wanted to quickly agree.  In actually though I had yet to start reading the book.  I just felt that my judgment might be different.  I had read the book reviews earlier but they were distant memories now as I wanted to develop my own assessment of the book.  It was John Hart's The Last Child and this is the second Hart novel the book club had selected after his first successful work The King of Lies.  And, full disclosure, I did like that mystery. 

In some cases though, a character's actions may be off-putting or the author may take huge leaps of faith that annoy the reader along with several other situations which may nose-dive the reading experience.  Everyone is a critic.

It's OK though because after a period of time you would have read the book.  You decide for yourself and then you can agree or counter the casual observer's book selection comments.