All the Time in the World

Considering that this book kept me up until really appallingly late not just once, but two nights in a row, I was massively disappointed by the ending. I don't necessarily require that all plot points be neatly resolved by book's end, but this not only didn't *solve* one of the major mysteries, it just sort of let even its unsolved-ness fall by the wayside, unremarked.

Basic summary: Police detective (Ireland) and his (female) partner catch a case where a 12 year old girl has been murdered and her body left near a patch of woods outside a suburban "estate" (equivalent to an American subdivision.) What the detective's co-workers don't know is that he had lived there as a child, and 20 years before, his two best friends disappeared in the woods; no trace of them was ever found, and he was so traumatized by the experience that he lost nearly every memory from childhood before that day. So the mysteries are multiple - who killed this little girl; is her death connected to the old disappearances; what happened to Jamie and Peter 20 years earlier; and why can't Rob remember?

The best parts: French's prose is sometimes really beautiful and evocative, especially the passages describing those carefree days of childhood, running around outdoors without anyone keeping track of your every move - something I think kids today have very little of. She also has excellent insights into human behavior and the tricky nature of memory - I particularly loved the segment where Rob's mother recounts how kind he'd been as a child, and how he'd convinced his friends to stop picking on another kid who was kind of an outcast - which scenario Rob remembered, but believed it was his best friend rather than himself who was the one who'd been so mature and concerned about the welfare of another child.