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A review by modernzorker
Missing by R.L. Stine
4.0
It's not uncommon for Mark and Cara's parents to stay out late. They're both highly technical sorts who specialize in mainframe installation for companies that can afford the massive computing power, and sometimes the jobs don't always go as smoothly as planned. This install at Cranford could easily be one of those times.
The thing is, mom and dad always call if they're going to pull an all-nighter . Admittedly the phone service at the house was out last evening, but they've made no attempts at all to contact their children: no visit home, no message from someone else on Fear Street, no calls at Shadyside High, no nothing.
The pair aren't entirely alone in the house. Mom's distant cousin Roger, a college student, has moved in with them, taking the attic for his own. Ever since the disappearance though, Roger's been acting strangely. What's up with the weird, unmarked van parked across the street? Why does Roger deny meeting up with the driver in the middle of the night? Why is there a loaded pistol in Roger's desk?
What's more, why doesn't Cranford have any record of Mark and Cara's parents' employment? Everyone from the security guard at the main gate to the CEO of the company comes up empty-handed when doing a search for the Burroughs. Surely it's just a computer glitch. No need to panic. The police are on the case, every officer in town is looking for the missing parents, but nobody has any answers. The siblings need to find out what happened to mom and dad, and fast, because if someone wanted their parents badly enough, they're likely to come after their children next.
* * * * *
Missing is the fourth book in R.L. Stine's long-running Fear Street saga, and after The Overnight, it's the earliest book in the series I've re-read so far. Considering my tepid response to The Overnight, I was worried diving into this one would yield similar results. I'm pleased to say that was not the case.
First, while I try to keep these reviews as spoiler-free as possible, I think it's important to say there's nothing supernatural at all going on in Missing. This one is grounded in reality, with no ghosts or other paranormal phenomena driving the plot. The Fear Street books can go either way, but I much prefer the ones that don't rely on vengeful spirits or bizarre magic to carry the momentum, since this often leads to a deus ex machina conclusion. It should also be noted that despite being part of the Fear Street series, Missing is a stand-alone story like all the non-direct sequels. There are three recurring characters from earlier in the series (Arnie, Lisa and Cory, all from the first Fear Street book), but knowing this doesn't affect the book at all unless you're one of those die-hard character trackers.
It's not even fair to classify Missing as horror. It's one of the least-scary Fear Street stories I've yet to come across, and yet it still fits. This is Stine going all out on the mystery aspect. The scares in this one are more of the slow-burning and paranoid variety. What would you do if your parents just didn't come home one evening? We all had fantasies about that as teenagers, and of course Mark and Cara start off thinking it's pretty cool. They have a few friends over, who invite a few of their friends, and soon enough there's a rocking twenty-kid party happening at the Burroughs' estate. It's not until the next morning that the siblings start to get truly concerned.
Stine also, interestingly enough, uses both Cara and Mark as viewpoint characters during the narrative. Later on in the series, Stine switches to an almost exclusive use of female teens for his lead characters. For this one though we get to peek in on the thoughts of both brother and sister, alternating every couple of chapters. This becomes important about halfway through the book when the kids split up to investigate different areas: Cara follows Roger on one of his late-night walks, while Mark cuts through the woods to talk with his ex-girlfriend whose behavior earlier made it seem like she knew something she couldn't tell him over the phone.
There's usually something Stine writes that tips his hand to readers before the big reveal, and I can often figure out the twist well before he lays it all out for the people who weren't paying attention. That's not the case with Missing, as Stine keeps his cards close to his chest, doling out information in dribs and drabs, and making excellent use of misdirection along the way. While I had some suspicions about the true identities and/or motives of some of the supporting characters, it isn't until the final couple of chapters that the truth comes out, and for once it's a bombshell that I not only didn't see coming, but it's explained in a way that doesn't require more than the normal suspension of disbelief for a regular fiction story.
Missing just flat out rocked. A part of me wonders if this was originally a different book that Stine retro-fit into the Fear Street line, because it's so utterly unlike any other story in this series that I've read thus far, and it lacks a good number of the tropes the line would make famous. Other Fear Street titles, for instance, often have the protagonist(s) unable or unwilling to go to the police or other adults because they're afraid they'll get in trouble (making prank phone calls in The Wrong Number, camping out without permission in The Overnight, etc...). Not so with Missing, where Mark and Cara pretty much involve every adult they can think of, including the police, over the course of the story.
Whether this was a stand-alone story shoehorned in, or Stine penned it specifically for the Fear Street series, doesn't matter. The book stands alone, holds it weight, and is especially refreshing coming on the heels of the mediocre offering that was The Overnight before it, although this one had a page count twenty higher than The Overnight which let it string out the mystery more successfully. This one kept my interest as an adult such that I burned through it in a single sitting, and I'm not sorry in the slightest.
Four creepy encounters in dark forests out of five. This one's a keeper.
Best Scene:
The most surprising thing about Missing is that the little teaser scene at the front of the novel is actually the one I would pick for the best scene in the book. Without giving anything away, Mark and Cara are held at gunpoint by an assailant demanding to know where their parents are. The kids are at a complete loss, since they've spent the entire book searching for their parents without any answers, but the one holding the gun won't take that for an answer:
The dialog might get a little hokey as the scene progresses, but there's no denying the tension of having a gun waved in your face by someone demanding answers to questions you don't have answers for. This scene comes quite late in the story, but it's such a great set-up that it made the choice too easy.
The thing is, mom and dad always call if they're going to pull an all-nighter . Admittedly the phone service at the house was out last evening, but they've made no attempts at all to contact their children: no visit home, no message from someone else on Fear Street, no calls at Shadyside High, no nothing.
The pair aren't entirely alone in the house. Mom's distant cousin Roger, a college student, has moved in with them, taking the attic for his own. Ever since the disappearance though, Roger's been acting strangely. What's up with the weird, unmarked van parked across the street? Why does Roger deny meeting up with the driver in the middle of the night? Why is there a loaded pistol in Roger's desk?
What's more, why doesn't Cranford have any record of Mark and Cara's parents' employment? Everyone from the security guard at the main gate to the CEO of the company comes up empty-handed when doing a search for the Burroughs. Surely it's just a computer glitch. No need to panic. The police are on the case, every officer in town is looking for the missing parents, but nobody has any answers. The siblings need to find out what happened to mom and dad, and fast, because if someone wanted their parents badly enough, they're likely to come after their children next.
* * * * *
Missing is the fourth book in R.L. Stine's long-running Fear Street saga, and after The Overnight, it's the earliest book in the series I've re-read so far. Considering my tepid response to The Overnight, I was worried diving into this one would yield similar results. I'm pleased to say that was not the case.
First, while I try to keep these reviews as spoiler-free as possible, I think it's important to say there's nothing supernatural at all going on in Missing. This one is grounded in reality, with no ghosts or other paranormal phenomena driving the plot. The Fear Street books can go either way, but I much prefer the ones that don't rely on vengeful spirits or bizarre magic to carry the momentum, since this often leads to a deus ex machina conclusion. It should also be noted that despite being part of the Fear Street series, Missing is a stand-alone story like all the non-direct sequels. There are three recurring characters from earlier in the series (Arnie, Lisa and Cory, all from the first Fear Street book), but knowing this doesn't affect the book at all unless you're one of those die-hard character trackers.
It's not even fair to classify Missing as horror. It's one of the least-scary Fear Street stories I've yet to come across, and yet it still fits. This is Stine going all out on the mystery aspect. The scares in this one are more of the slow-burning and paranoid variety. What would you do if your parents just didn't come home one evening? We all had fantasies about that as teenagers, and of course Mark and Cara start off thinking it's pretty cool. They have a few friends over, who invite a few of their friends, and soon enough there's a rocking twenty-kid party happening at the Burroughs' estate. It's not until the next morning that the siblings start to get truly concerned.
Stine also, interestingly enough, uses both Cara and Mark as viewpoint characters during the narrative. Later on in the series, Stine switches to an almost exclusive use of female teens for his lead characters. For this one though we get to peek in on the thoughts of both brother and sister, alternating every couple of chapters. This becomes important about halfway through the book when the kids split up to investigate different areas: Cara follows Roger on one of his late-night walks, while Mark cuts through the woods to talk with his ex-girlfriend whose behavior earlier made it seem like she knew something she couldn't tell him over the phone.
There's usually something Stine writes that tips his hand to readers before the big reveal, and I can often figure out the twist well before he lays it all out for the people who weren't paying attention. That's not the case with Missing, as Stine keeps his cards close to his chest, doling out information in dribs and drabs, and making excellent use of misdirection along the way. While I had some suspicions about the true identities and/or motives of some of the supporting characters, it isn't until the final couple of chapters that the truth comes out, and for once it's a bombshell that I not only didn't see coming, but it's explained in a way that doesn't require more than the normal suspension of disbelief for a regular fiction story.
Missing just flat out rocked. A part of me wonders if this was originally a different book that Stine retro-fit into the Fear Street line, because it's so utterly unlike any other story in this series that I've read thus far, and it lacks a good number of the tropes the line would make famous. Other Fear Street titles, for instance, often have the protagonist(s) unable or unwilling to go to the police or other adults because they're afraid they'll get in trouble (making prank phone calls in The Wrong Number, camping out without permission in The Overnight, etc...). Not so with Missing, where Mark and Cara pretty much involve every adult they can think of, including the police, over the course of the story.
Whether this was a stand-alone story shoehorned in, or Stine penned it specifically for the Fear Street series, doesn't matter. The book stands alone, holds it weight, and is especially refreshing coming on the heels of the mediocre offering that was The Overnight before it, although this one had a page count twenty higher than The Overnight which let it string out the mystery more successfully. This one kept my interest as an adult such that I burned through it in a single sitting, and I'm not sorry in the slightest.
Four creepy encounters in dark forests out of five. This one's a keeper.
Best Scene:
The most surprising thing about Missing is that the little teaser scene at the front of the novel is actually the one I would pick for the best scene in the book. Without giving anything away, Mark and Cara are held at gunpoint by an assailant demanding to know where their parents are. The kids are at a complete loss, since they've spent the entire book searching for their parents without any answers, but the one holding the gun won't take that for an answer:
He pointed the pistol at Cara's head. "I'll bet if I shoot one of you, the other will suddenly remember where your parents are. Shall we try it?"
"No!" Cara screamed.
He moved the gun toward Mark. "One of you is going to tell me."
"But our parents are missing!" Mark cried. "We don't know where they are!"
"Which one of you should I shoot?" he asked. "It's too bad, but you're leaving me no choice. I have to shoot one of you."
The dialog might get a little hokey as the scene progresses, but there's no denying the tension of having a gun waved in your face by someone demanding answers to questions you don't have answers for. This scene comes quite late in the story, but it's such a great set-up that it made the choice too easy.