Review of "No Time for Goodbye" by Linwood Barclay

The night when fourteen year-old Cynthia Bigge lied to her parents about going over to a friend's house to study when she was actually meeting with a seventeen year-old boy, she knew it was wrong, but she had no idea how much that night would change her life. When her parents discovered she wasn't where she said she'd be, her dad went out to look for her. And he found her - sitting in a car with her boyfriend, drinking beer. Her dad snatched her and took her home where she stormed upstairs to bed, mad, embarassed, and nauseous. When she woke up the next morning, the house was empty. No sign of either parent or her brother. A nightmare come true.

Twenty five years after that fateful night, now married with a daughter of her own, Cynthia agrees to let a TV crew show her going back to the old house, and make an on-air plea for information. A telephone call leads her to believe that she may finally get an answer to the big question - Why did her family abandon her? But it turns out that someone might just be playing games with her emotions.

It's a tight little thriller with some great characters. Pay close attention to those early pages. Its like most television mysteries - nothing happens for no reason.