Author Hallie Ephron weaves a captivating tale of suspense

“YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR” by Hallie Ephron (William Morrow, 304 pages, $27)

Hallie Ephron was the third of four daughters, and that is where you find her books in the library. By alphabetical — rather than birth — order, she comes after Amy and Delia and before Nora on the shelves.

Ephron, daughter of Hollywood screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, was a latecomer to the family profession. I was a latecomer to her solo suspense novels (she previously co-wrote mysteries about a forensic neuropsychologist) and started with her most recent book, “You’ll Never Know, Dear,” and I’m working my way back.

“You’ll Never Know, Dear” is the story of a little girl who vanishes and how the apparent return of her custom doll might provide clues to her whereabouts — and endanger the relatives still living in the shadow of her disappearance and some dark secrets.

Thirty-nine years ago, in a small South Carolina town, two sisters were outside playing when 7-yearold Lis chased a puppy that scampered into the yard and 4-year-old Janey — well, no one knows what happened to her. She was, simply, gone.

“Lis learned a hard lesson: look away for a moment and the thing you cherish most in this world could be … would be … snatched from you.” Lis is now the divorced mother of a college-age daughter, Vanessa, who lives in Providence, R.I.

Every year on the anniversary of Janey’s disappearance, her now-widowed mother (commonly known as Miss Sorrel) places a classified ad with a picture of Janey’s one-ofa-kind porcelain doll. Miss Sorrel offers a reward for the keepsake, which she made and modeled after Janey. Find the doll, find the daughter, she hopes.

A woman appears with a doll that might be Janey’s, but the stranger angrily bolts, prompting a search for her and answers to haunting questions. If the mystery weren’t thorny enough, an accident sends Miss Sorrel and Lis to the hospital and summons Vanessa home.

The story zigs and then zags, leading the reader to be convinced of someone’s innocence, duplicity or guilt and then forced to re-evaluate. As a character says, “Just when I think I’m starting to understand, the whole thing gets turned inside out.” The surprising villain is unmasked but without the confrontational fireworks we expect or that the crimes frankly demand.

Although men appear in the past and present, Ephron creates a strong female-centric world. In addition to Miss Sorrel, Lis and Vanessa, key characters include Evelyn, a neighbor and fellow doll aficionado, along with a pair of strangers drawn into the decades-old drama.

The author can artfully paint an image — a hospital’s oxygen chamber is compared to Snow White’s glass coffin — and sharply shine a light on the sister left behind. Lis knows her police officer boyfriend is sympathetic, but he hadn’t grown up feeling Janey’s absence every minute. “Hadn’t been afraid to look in a closet or under a bed, terrified of finding her body or the bogeyman who’d come back to grab the other sister, the one that maybe he’d meant to take the first time around.

“Hadn’t had to endure the curious, often hostile stares Lis had received from strangers who thought they knew better than the police and were convinced that Janey hadn’t been taken. That she’d been killed by someone in the family and then tossed off one of (their dad) Woody’s sportfishing boats.”

After reading “You’ll Never Know, Dear,” I tracked down 2015’s “Night Night, Sleep Tight,” inspired in part by the 1958 killing of Lana Turner’s boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, in Beverly Hills. I loved its Old Hollywood theme and twisty ending and plan to dive into her other books, “There Was an Old Woman,” “Come and Find Me” and “Never Tell a Lie.”

As a writing teacher, author of “Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel” and former crime fiction book reviewer for The Boston Globe, Ephron knows her stuff. And her suspense.