All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

February 6, 2024

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

After years away, Margot returns to her home town to care for her Uncle Luke. The day after she arrives, a child goes missing, and the case is eerily familiar to the case of a six year old girl who went missing in 1994 when Margot was growing up. The little girl happened to live across the street from Margot's aunt and uncle and was Margot's best friend. Twenty years later, Margot is sure that the two events are linked and sets out to discover who is responsible.

This was just okay. I am a fan of Flowers' podcast Crime Junkie, so I was interested in reading her mystery. I am usually a sucker for missing person stories, especially when set in small towns (I love ID's Murder in the Heartland series), but this one missed the mark. The story is based not-so-loosely on the Jon-Benet Ramsey case - the little girl in the novel who went missing in 1994 participates in child beauty pageants, the parents are wealthy and immediately suspected, and there is no real resolution to the case. As other readers have noted, the ending (or non-ending) was disappointing. I think I'll stick to her podcast, which really is outstanding. 

Child beauty pageant queens - they're six, not sixteen