As she read the first several paragraphs of The Missing Au Pair on her Kindle, Maggie felt a frisson of delight. The author, Carrie Rubin, was quickly dropping hints that Kelly, a not-missing au pair, had a secret. No languid strolls around Paris for this reader yet. There would be time enough for that. First, Rubin had set the scene and offered Maggie the titillation of a mystery.

We are in 1980s Paris, Maggie thought, taking as clues the soundtrack of Prince’s Purple Rain, Kelly’s Walkman, and her “dark, permed hair.” Later in the novel, she would snort at the colorful costumes of Kelly and her friend Wayne whose naturally curly hair was “gelled […] to Duran Duran perfection.” She remembered that time very well, a time when she and her cousins Mary and Melissa all had big hair and just as big shoulder pads sewn into their blouses and blazers. They could have tried out for their high school football team with those shoulder pads.

She had started reading in the morning, a cup of tea beside her, herself curled into the corner of her couch. Hours later, she startled when a table lamp clicked on. During those hours, she had shadowed Kelly while she walked the streets of Paris and explored the catacombs looking for the missing au pair Erin.

Maggie had been engrossed in this dark cozy mystery novel, a story of a young woman gone missing and another young woman determined to find her. Kelly had known Erin from language school. They hadn’t been friends, but Kelly harbored a grief that needed to be acted upon. When she lived in America, her own best friend Nina had gone missing. Eventually Nina’s dead body was found. She had been murdered, and Kelly felt that she should have done more to try and find Nina, to save her.

Maggie thought she understood Kelly’s desire to make amends by finding Erin. And she understood Kelly’s desire to escape a depressing and oppressive home where she was treated as an indentured servant by her brother and mother. But her determination put her at risk of losing her own job as an au pair and also put her in danger. Kelly was hard-headed but naive, not at all prepared to learn what might have happened to Erin.

Maggie closed the Kindle and mused about the darkness of this otherwise cozy mystery. She was grateful that Rubin left much to the reader’s imagination. No gore, but just the idea that people were being tortured was enough to make Maggie’s mind flood with news stories about similar crimes.

Maggie liked how Rubin juxtaposed the beauty of Paris, its streets, parks, and grand architecture, with the dark cruelty happening underneath its streets. She liked learning about the catacombs and what it was like being an au pair in Paris in the 1980s. She really liked Kelly and Wayne. She liked the ending which was surprising but satisfying in many ways. And, she thought, her cousins would like the novel too. Time to share.

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Thank you for reading this different kind of book review. I hope it has sparked your interest in getting a copy of The Missing Au Pair for yourself … or a friend.

The Missing Au Pair is available in print, ebook and audio formats at Amazon.

Here’s your reward for reading!