No Show by Simon Wood, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Englishman Terry Sheffield met and fell in love with American journalist Sarah Morton while vacationing in Costa Rica. It took six months of legal action to allow Terry to leave England to live in the US, but the with his bride to be Sarah waiting for him it was worth the effort. They were to meet at the San Francisco airport but when Terry arrived Sarah wasn't to be found, in No Show, a stand-alone thriller by Simon Wood.

Terry calls Sarah's home but gets no answer. He takes a shuttle there, but without keys to enter the house, he breaks in but is observed by a neighbor doing so, who calls the police. Inside he finds several weeks worth of unopened mail and a full answering machine. By then the police have arrived, who take him into the station, where he insists they list Sarah as a missing person. They respond by saying she simply got cold feet and wanted out of the marriage. They release him, and he returns to Sarah's home, where he begins to go through her papers. On one is a list of four women's names, one of whom was reported as being murdered that very day, her throat slashed and her tongue cut out. Asking a new friend Oscar to help him, they look up the remaining women on the list, all now dead, finding nothing in common: they each lived in a different state and they held positions at different companies. But after questioning their friends and family, they learn they had all been "whistle blowers", revealing to authorities a crime each had witnessed at their place of employment. As a journalist, Sarah could have been researching these women for a story and disappeared for her own safety. Or could she be a name on someone else's list, one destined for elimination as well?

No Show is a multi-dimensional novel where the plotline is paramount. The characters are well developed and the action appropriate to each. It's a mystery but also a love story and a story about friendship. For those readers concerned about excessive violence and language, there is neither here, a good book to enjoy for the well-told story of a missing woman and a man determined to find her.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of No Show.