Satisfying as a 21st Century Poirot Summation in a Room of Suspects

The first 25% of Stacy Willingham’s book All the Dangerous Things starts out gradually, like a wave beginning to slow it’s onshore advance, or that moment you’re sitting alone in your home, aware it should be silent, but hearing a barely audible cacophony of high pitched sounds, like a tinny concert of cicadas pitched at a frequency almost beyond comprehension. As you read there are twinges of things that seem faintly foreboding, but not as jarring as the sudden sound of a doorbell you’re not expecting to ring.  

At this point Isabella Drake’s toddler son Mason has been missing one full year, taken from his crib at night, without any trace of evidence. Isabella’s life has become solitary, her obsessive quest to find her son is her reason for living. There are two strands to the story that alternate throughout the book, her present circumstances and scenes from her past replaying themselves in an almost stream of consciousness like search for the truth. Her knowledge bad things happened in the past, that are not talked about, and might be related to her son’s disappearance, haunt her. It’s presence seeps pervasively on the narrative like hot humid sultry summer air in Isabella’s Isle of Hope, Georgia home.

The next 75% of the book is like living as a cartoon character being pulled, uncontrollably, behind the powerful vehicle that is this narrative, lifted off the ground, and propelled forward, airborne, like a plane dragging its tethered sign through the sky above a stretch of sandy beach. Meals, drinks, and perhaps bathroom breaks may be ignored as the reader tumbles through each page seeking the answer to Mason’s disappearance. It’s probably even more pronounced if you are a true crime aficionado, and the ending is as satisfying as the final case summary Hercule Poirot executes in his room of anxious suspects.