The Day He Left

December 1, 2021
After a schoolteacher walks out the door and vanishes, the Santa Rosa Violent Crime team finds his disappearance is related to several crimes. Paul Behrens is a dedicated English teacher whose relationship with his wife, Annie, has hit a new low. The two seldom spend time together or know what's going on in the lives of their teenage children: Jesse is dealing pot, and Claire is being blackmailed by middle school mean girls. Annie's work as a night nurse has led to her affair with a doctor. Meanwhile, the Violent Crime team is scattered, with Frames on loan to Narcotics and Eden Somers, a former FBI analyst, called back to the bureau to take a look at a series of killings she'd worked on before. Unit head Eddie Mahler is still struggling with migraines and trying dating apps, which aren't working any better than you'd expect. When the team starts looking into Behrens' disappearance, they learn that he took a disposable phone with him and that the phone he left behind contains Google searches for sexual assault, molestation, and Child Protective Services. There's a letter of resignation on his laptop. The team members use their diverse skills to search for Behrens and figure out the reason for his disappearance. When they find him shot dead in his car, the big question is: suicide or murder? Behrens' love of literature ruled his life, and his students adored him. The clues to his death will be found in his life and his relations with others. An excellent police procedural raised to a higher level by the in-depth look at the lives of the people who work the crimes.

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December 1, 2021
Paul Behrens was having a nice life. A literature teacher at a Santa Rosa middle school, he possessed one of the primary qualifications for a great teacher: he loved his subject. Then one morning, like Flitcraft in The Maltese Falcon, he went out his front door and never came back. The first part of this novel, detailing the cops' attempts to find Behrens, reads refreshingly, if a little oddly, like police reports written by detectives who quote Twelfth Night to each other. Their investigation is described in one of the novel's many luscious passages as looking for ""that place in the rear view mirror where the unravelling began."" Questions arise. Why did Behrens withdraw $1,200 the night before he vanished? Who is the man caught on camera moving through Behrens' home room in the dark? Along with a tantalizing mystery, readers should prepare for doses of psychotherapy, as when one woman talks of her ""work to understand my own life and to find out how I can make it better."" Prepare, too, for some startling revelations about that ""nice life."" A beguiling mix of literature and crime.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from December 13, 2021
At the start of Weisel’s excellent sequel to 2021’s The Silenced Women, Annie Behrens, an alcoholic nurse, is awakened by a call one morning from the Santa Rosa, Calif., middle school where her husband, Paul, teaches English to say he hasn’t shown up. When Annie tries to phone Paul, she notices Paul left his cell phone at home, along with his lesson plans. That afternoon, Annie reports Paul missing to the police. Lt. Eddie Mahler, a member of the Santa Rosa PD Violent Crimes Investigation team, interviews Annie, who has no idea why her husband has disappeared. Mahler notices Annie has been drinking and wonders whether Paul was fleeing a dysfunctional marriage, and evidence surfaces suggesting Paul may have had inappropriate relationships with female students. The search for the truth leads to some surprising answers. The VCI team members aren’t cynical, wise-cracking super cops; on the contrary, they’re troubled individuals who accept that “people are complex” and capable of all kinds of foolish, noble, and destructive actions. Weisel does a terrific job blending police procedural with character study.