Mystery Of The Missing Girls:
The Sundown Motel by Simone St. James moves between dual time frames as two intrepid young women set out find out just what is going on at the seedy motel of the title, for no other reason but their own curiosity. Into the mystery of missing girls, and creepy men, the author mixes a dash of the supernatural, to make it a very entertaining read.
The Sun Down Motel in a small town called Fell is a sad relic of an expected boom that never happened. Over the years, it has grown increasingly decrepit, but has remained unchanged. The current owner, who inherited it from his mother, looks upon it as a liability.
In 2017, Carly Kirk travels to Fell to find out what happened to her aunt, who had disappeared thirty-five years ago. The story intercuts between her quest and the adventures of her aunt, Viv Delaney, who intended to make her way to New York, back in 1982, but took up the job as a night clerk in the motel, to make some money.
Carly is fascinated by the missing aunt, and her family’s silence over it. After the death of her mother, Carly decides to go to Fell, and things move in spooky ways– she gets the same job in the motel and manages to rent the same room that Viv had lived in—as if someone were pulling strings from beyond the grave to make sure Carly uncovers the truth.
When Carly starts reading up on Fell and gets snippets of history from her new, equally curious ‘murderino’ (cool word used in the dedication, look it up!) roommate, Heather, she finds that around the time Viv vanished, other girls had been found murdered, and the cops had simply not investigated the cases seriously enough. Back in 1982, a few dead girls did not even make national news, like they would in today’s sensation-seeking times.
Carly encounters the same eerie things that her aunt had—the power going off suddenly, the motel’s neon sign blinking, door opening and slamming on their own, a lingering smell of cigarette smoke and strange apparitions.
Viv bit back her fear to probe the possibility of a serial killer on the loose, in spite of being discouraged by the cops. Obviously nobody in the sleepy town wants that old can of worms opened after so many years.
With fast-paced plotting and smooth shifts from the past to the present, St. James also adds enough social commentary and 80s nostalgia to the plot already brimming with suspense, twists, chills, thrills and romance to push the novel into the bestseller chart.
The Sundown Motel
By Simone St. James
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 336
