This was an audiobook that seemed to promise so much. The way the book wrapped up, however, let me down for a variety of reasons. It almost felt like she wrote the story to a certain point and then didn’t know what to do, so she just wrote something to wrap it up. There are parts of it that harken back to Widowmaker, the recent Paul Doiron book I read, so maybe I was thinking that it handled the topic of what to do with sex offenders once they’re out, especially ones who are guilty of poor judgment rather than out-and-out assault.

Sandra Jones is a young teacher, married to Jason, with a four-year-old daughter. One night, he comes home from work and finds his daughter sleeping and Sandra missing. Jason waits a few hours, then calls the police. However, he isn’t all that forthcoming as the investigation kicks into gear.

D.D. Warren is called in to investigate. If you’ve read earlier books in the series, you know she’s a brash, no-nonsense detective. As always, when these things happen, the police look to the husband. Jason spends most of the time with his daughter, trying to comfort her, and is resistant to the police questioning him. He called them, yet at the same time, he seems to resent them.

When a registered sex offender is found living a few doors away, the investigation takes a different turn. Aiden Brewster is mainly guilty of poor judgment for having sex with a 14-year-old when he was 19. Those details don’t matter, though, as he’s the only other suspect besides Jason that they have. Since Sandra is a pretty, blond, white woman, the story of her disappearance goes national quickly, and her estranged father travels up from Georgia, ready to take custody of the daughter when Jason is arrested. There’s a reason he’s estranged, though.

The Neighbor started with a great premise. The wife disappears, and the husband is acting skittish, so the police think he’s behind it. They delve into the background of the marriage and talk to Sandra’s co-workers to find out if there have been problems. With the little Jason is feeding them, there’s not much they can do. When Aiden pops up on their radar, they have another suspect, but D.D. is sure Jason is hiding something. However, after that point, it stalls. The investigation goes this way and that and never really makes much progress. When Sandra’s father arrives, he is ready to point fingers. The police don’t know why they are estranged and worry that there is domestic violence involved, in which the husband tries to keep the wife away from her family. That’s not it, though. The reader (or listener) hears from Sandra’s perspective up until she disappears, and knows the last thing that should happen is her father being allowed anywhere near her daughter.

I felt that a lot of problems could have been avoided if Sandra had just communicated, particularly with Jason. There are some issues at the school where she teaches with a student who is crushing on her, which also adds a suspect to the mix. However, the police seem to discount him pretty easily. Jason is eager for the police to concentrate on Aiden, and Aiden is anxious for the police to arrest Jason and leave him alone.

I don’t like how D.D. was written here. Instead of being a good detective, she seems to think she has the answer in that Jason killed his wife, and then wants everything to fit that. I’ve seen that happen in real life when a co-worker was murdered, and the police told us they knew the husband did it, but couldn’t prove it. About a year later, someone else confessed to that murder. D.D. is going along with the idea that it’s usually someone you know and not a stranger, but she doesn’t seem to entertain other possibilities except for Aiden. She’s not investigating, really; she’s trying to bully one or the other into confessing.

The audiobook was narrated by three people, allowing for the different points of view. Emily Card, Kirby Heyborne, and Kirsten Potter do a great job with the material. I liked this style for the differing points of view, as it made it easy to slide into the different perspectives each time it shifted.

I’m hoping the series gets better, because the first two books were really good and this one ended up being … meh. I can’t totally describe why without spoiling the book, but someone dies due to someone else’s poor choices, and it doesn’t seem like anyone wants to point fingers. I felt this was a time when some fingers should have been pointed and something done, but it’s left unresolved. The Neighbor is a book in this series that could be skipped, I think. It’s okay, but it should have been a lot better.

Previous book in the series: