The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer is a thriller written by Joël Dicker, author of The Truth About The Harry Quebert Case.
In 2014, captain Jesse Rosenberg is about to retire from the police force of Orphea, a tourist town in the Hamptons. He's known as "Captain 100 Percent" because he solved every single case he investigated.However, a young journalist named Stephanie Mailer tells him that he didn't find the real killer in his first ever case, the 1994 quadruple murder of then-mayor Joseph Gordon, his wife and son and Meghan Padalin, a local woman who happened to be jogging by.
Soon after, Stephanie Mailer goes missing, prompting Jesse to re-examine the 1994 case while he searches for her.
Due to the number of plot twists, expect spoilers ahead.
The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer contais examples of:
- A Deadly Affair: Subverted. Although Meghan cheated on her husband with Meta Ostrovski, which gives them both a motive for her murder, they both turn out to be innocent.
- Alone with the Psycho: It happens to police officer Betsy Kanner at the end of the book.
- Asshole Victim: It turns out that Joseph Gordon was a very corrupt and ruthless politician, with plenty of people who had a reason for wanting him dead. Jeremiah Fold was even worse, being responsible for a litany of crimes from drug trafficking to murder, and forcing unwilling people to work for him.
- Broken Ace: Jesse Rosenberg is the best cop of Orphea, nicknamed "Captain 100 Percent" because he solved every single case he's worked on. He's also still deeply struggling over the death of his girlfriend Natasha.
- Driven to Suicide: A teenage girl, Tara, due to the homophobia and harassment she suffered. A local businessman also killed himself back in 1993 after refusing to pay kickbacks to Gordon and being ruined financially by him.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason why most of the victims were killed
- His Name Is...: Carolina is shot just as she's about to recite a line from a play that should reveal the killer's name.
- Intrepid Reporter: The titular character, Stephanie Mailer, investigated the 1994 murders first-hand.
- Joggers Find Death: Meghan Padalin is killed during her evening run
- The Lost Lenore: Natasha is this for Jesse, twenty years after her death he still hasn't been able to move on. His grieving in the immediate aftermath of the accident also prevented him from receiving very important information about the murders. Meghan Padalin is this for her former lover Meta Ostrovski, who is determined to find out who killed her
- Never One Murder: The story already starts off with the death of four people, but then Stephanie is killed, it's discovered that the 1994 presumed-accidental death of criminal Jeremiah Fold is related to the murders and the perpetrator kills two other people and attempts to kill two more before they are caught.
- Poor Communication Kills: There are people who would never testify against the killer for a very good reason, but the killer doesn't know that because their accomplice has kept those people's identity a secret, so they get murdered anyways. Michael Bird knows that he has to kill Meghan, but he doesn't know that Joseph Gordon ordered the hit, so when he discovers that the Gordons witnessed the murder he kills them all . The fact that Stephanie Mailer and Kirk Hayward are so cryptic with what they know also delays the solution of the case, with more people dying in the meantime.
- That One Case: Former chief of police Kirk Hayward still obsesses over the 1994 murders even though he has long since resigned and started a new career.
- The Runaway: Mylla was a teenage runaway who was taken in by Jeremiah Fold and eventually forced to work for him.
- "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: A very peculiar version of this. Michael Bird and Ted Tennenbaum both wanted local criminal Jeremiah Fold dead, as he was blackmailing them. Joseph Gordon wanted Meghan Padalin dead, so they agreed to swap victims with Tennenbaum acting as the intermediary and Bird and Gordon ignoring each other's identities.But things didn't go as planned
- Toxic Friend Influence: Leyla encouraged Carolina to do drugs and bully her former friend Tara.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Gordons' twelve year old son is murdered with his parents
