The Night She Disappeared

Mystery novels and thrillers comprise a hugely popular literary genre. The popularity of mystery novels throughout literary history, from Wilkie Collins’s 1868 The Moonstone to Gillian Flynn’s 2012 Gone Girl, illustrates the enduring effectiveness of the genre. The hallmark of a mystery novel is a puzzling situation, usually a crime, which remains unsolved until the end of the narrative. Mystery novels draw on real-world fears to create compelling narratives, offering readers the opportunity to play detective by piecing together clues left by the author. Successful mystery novels usually contain enough detail to allow readers to follow leads but not enough to spoil the outcome of the central plotline.

April Henry is known for writing bestselling young-adult thrillers. The Night She Disappeared follows the classic mystery plot of an abducted girl and a race against time to save her. Along the way Henry utilizes several common tropes of the genre. She creates a large suspect pool and inserts a red herring in Cody Renfrew, who initially appears to be a promising suspect but is quickly ruled out by the narrative (though not by the police). Kayla’s abductor taunts the police, keeping his identity under wraps and manipulating their investigation by calling in a false lead. When his identity is revealed, he turns out to be an unlikely suspect who wasn’t even on police radar.

Henry also subverts several tropes, most notably the death of the victim. Though most people believe Kayla is dead within days of her disappearance, Kayla fights unflaggingly for her survival in her captor’s basement. When the final confrontation occurs, Kayla lives while her abductor dies, a reversal of the usual outcome. Henry also focuses heavily on character relationships and arcs, setting up The Night She Disappeared as a bildungsroman within a thriller. She deepens the mystery by switching perspectives and intersperses the novel with pieces of ephemera, meant to mimic real-world texts, connected to the case. Through these techniques, she constructs a narrative grounded by a complex mystery and strong character relationships.