In Last Night author Karen Ellis chronicles the fallout from a group of teens taking a late night adventure. The story shifts in time with some chapters taking place in the aftermath of the eventful night and other chapters flashing back to show tell what took place.
The story revolves around a young man named Crisp and his female acquaintance Glynnie. On his graduation day, Crisp is arrested for a trumped-up charge by a stereotypical racist depiction of an NYPD cop. Glynnie saw him in custody so after his release, he feels obligated to go explain to her is not a real criminal.
Glynnie wants to go buy weed. Thinking his future college plans are destroyed by the arrest Crips goes with her. Their trip to buy weed kicks off a series of events that snowball out of control. By the next day, they have not returned home so their parents report them missing.
Lex Cole, an NYPD detective troubled by his personal life falling apart. Yet even with issues at home, he has a compelling desire to find these missing kids. The story has detective Cole finding clues and information about the teens. Then the next chapter a flashback explaining what the teens were doing to leave that clue behind.
Overall Last Night was a compelling read. The characters were all interesting. I liked how the author thought out the reasons as to why they did what they did. This could easily be a story about some random kids just being “dumb teens”. However, the characters all have reasons for what they set out to do and how they react as events unfold.
On the negative I do need to point out the author seems to have anti-police and anti-gun feelings. More than once there was a minny rant about corrupt cops or the need to ban guns. These rants felt more like a political statement from the author than part of the narrative. It was not enough to make me want to put the book down. However, given that many of my readers are in public safety it is something I need to point out.
Anyone looking for a good thriller with well-developed characters should pick up Last Night.
A free review copy of this book was provided via NetGalley for this unbiased review.