No Show by Simon Wood

Despite the long journey, Englishman Terry Sheffield arrives in San Francisco from London with a bounce in his step. Green Card in hand, he’s ready to start his new life with American wife, Sarah. The two met while on holiday in Costa Rica, and after a whirlwind romance were married. Now, after being apart for 6 months due to bureaucratic red tape, things have finally lined up for the newlyweds.

Only, Sarah isn’t there to meet him at the airport. After waiting for several hours, hoping she was just stuck in traffic, Terry finally takes a shuttle to “their” house, a place he’s never actually been. Sarah isn’t there either, which forces Terry to break in…something a watchful neighbor dutifully reports to the local sheriff. A brief arrest and long explanation later, Terry is left with a skeptical sheriff, wary new neighbors, and still no wife.

Terry can find no explanation for her disappearance, but does find evidence that she left voluntarily–there’s no sign of struggle in the house and a bag, some clothes and personal items seem to be missing–and has to wonder if the police are right: did the woman he married just get cold feet and take off?

When a dead woman fitting Sarah’s description turns up, her tongue cut out, Terry’s brought to the scene to identify the body. He’s relieved to see that it’s not her, but disturbed that the sheriff now sees solving the murder as more important than finding Sarah, whom the sheriff is still not convinced didn’t just run off. It isn’t until more women start turning up dead that the sheriff begins to entertain the idea there may be some connection, but the connection he’s looking for isn’t exactly the one Terry had in mind.

Given her profession of freelance investigative journalist, Terry’s forced to wonder if Sarah’s disappearance has something to do with a story she’s working on. But if it does, was the disappearance deliberate, or sinister? And what, if anything, do the dead women have to do with it? Only adding to his frustration and anxiety, the place where he’s lined up a job, biotech company Genavax, isn’t exactly what he was expecting. Actually, nothing about what he finds–or doesn’t, as the case may be–in America is quite what he was expecting. In fact, the more Terry pokes around, the more complicated things become.

As do all his books, Simon Wood gets No Show off to a galloping start, plunging both Terry and the reader immediately into mystery and confusion from the moment Terry steps off the plane. Terry’s status as an outsider, not just new to town but to the very country, provides Wood with fertile ground for tension, miscommunication, and appropriately timed doses of wry humor. It, and the couple’s brief courtship, also provides Wood with the chance to explore the very nature of relationships–particularly those of a romantic nature–and to ask how well does anyone really know someone…even the person they’re married to.

There’s nothing especially groundbreaking about the plot of No Show, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Not every book needs to contort itself into a pretzel trying to prove how clever and original it is. No, Wood is happy to just dig in, grab the reader’s interest, and tell a page-turning mystery/whodunnit story, and you’ll be more than happy to go along for the fast-paced, twisting, “didn’t see that coming” ending of a ride.

No Show is available from Thomas & Mercer (ISBN: 978-1612184074).