Point of View

This novel is written from the first-person point of view of Rob. He tells the story of the investigation of the murder of a 12-year-old girl after the fact so that the details of the investigation are written in the past tense. He often breaks into his story to add some insight that he has realized only after the investigation was completed. These asides are written in the present tense.

For instance, in Chapter 22, Rob switches from past to present tense in the same paragraph: “The sucker punch, coming out of nowhere while I was still reeling from being found out, left me stunned and speechless. This will seem incredible, but I swear it had never occurred to me, not once in twenty years, that I could be a suspect in Peter and Jamie’s disappearance” (493). Rob has been talking about how O’Kelly’s...