Search for missing child yields surprising secrets

“All the Dangerous Things” by Stacy Willingham (St. Martin’s Publishing Group)

In her hugely successful debut thriller, “A Flicker in the Dark,” Stacy Willingham developed a plot that involved solving crimes from the fairly distant past, putting the spotlight of suspicion on one character after another, with amazing twists and revelations, and a protagonist/narrator, Chloe Davis, herself a psychiatrist, who suffered from a collection of neuroses, including anxiety attacks and insomnia.

Isabelle Drake, the heroine/narrator of Willingham’s new novel, “All the Dangerous Things,” hasn’t slept in a year.

It has been a year since her toddler, Mason, was abducted, silently, in the middle of the night from their home in Savannah.

Neither Isabelle nor her husband, Ben, saw or heard anything.

The police investigate, of course, but there are no real clues.

It looks like an inside job – no forced doors or broken windows – but with what possible motive?

At first, Isabelle stayed awake to BE there if Mason returned, or was returned. Then she lost the ability to sleep. No amount of medication or white wine could keep her under. She has had only micro naps for a year. Her nerves are frazzled, and, as is often the case, the strain has damaged her marriage. Ben has moved out. She is indeed a mess.

Isabelle has, understandably, become obsessed. She dedicates her life to finding little Mason. She investigates full-time, is active online, sets up a bulletin-board crime wall in her house and, even though, it causes fresh pain every time, speaks to true crime groups.

Mason must not be forgotten.

In the first few pages of this rather long book, we learn that even before the abduction, Isabelle suffered from serious sleep disorders. As a child, outside of Beaufort, she walked in her sleep, waking up elsewhere in the house or even outdoors, and remembering nothing about her wanderings.