Blog Tour: The Missing File

Title: The Missing File

Author: D.A. Mishani

Series: Book #1

Format- Paperback

Publisher- Harper

Published- April 16th, 2013

Pages- 289

Source- TLC Book Tours

In The Missing File, Israeli detective Avraham Avraham must find a teenage boy gone missing from the suburbs of Tel Aviv in this first volume in a fresh new literary crime series by D. A. Mishani. 

Crimes in Avraham’s quiet suburb are generally not all that complex. But when a sixteen-year-old boy goes missing and a schoolteacher offers up a baffling complication, Avraham finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew about his life. 

Told through alternating points of view, The Missing File is an emotionally wrought, character-driven page-turner with plenty of twists and turns. It’s a mystery that will leave readers questioning the notions of innocence and guilt, and the nebulous nature of truth.

Avraham Avraham is an investigator who usually has to deal with mothers who want their daughters followed or class bullies to get reprimanded so when a new mother walks in telling him that her son is missing he thinks nothing of it. He think he ran away or will come back soon after a wild night partying because nothing ever really goes wrong where he lives. This time he is proven wrong. Racked with guilt he gets on the case as soon as he can to find the missing boy. He tries to make up for lost time but seems more frazzled than usual with this case. Meanwhile there is Ze'ev, the missing boy's neighbor and once English tutor, who seems to take a great interest in the case. He's a little more than suspicious when he starts wanting to see Avraham all the time to tell him the type of person Ofer really is. This is a mystery that will keep you questioning until the end: W hat really happened to Ofer Sharabi?

Avraham is supposed to be this great investigator so initially I thought he would have it all together. He dismisses this mother's fears that something horrible happened to her son which I can easily forgive him for because it was an obvious mistake. The thing about Avraham and all the characters  were that they were the quiet, pensive type so any shake or disruption in how their world is startles them. Avraham seemed not to recover for most of the story because he felt so guilty for not taking the case so seriously in the beginning. I know that's not supposed to be the case based on something the book said later on but it feels that way. I like that Avraham was the quiet, pensive type like I think all the other characters were like too. It created this atmosphere of just... quiet tension. Tension when things didn't go a certain way. Again like the whole world turned upside down because things weren't how that character thought it would turn out.

Ze'ev was such a great character. When his part came around I made sure I paid attention. There were always moments with him where I'm surprised Avraham didn't turn around and say "Did you really just say that?" I mean he gave off definite crazy vibes. Him and his "relationship" with Ofer was all up in the air throughout the book. You think you know what he's about and what's going to happen but in the end you really don't. All I can tell you is that I felt like it was obvious he had something to do with Ofer's disappearance throughout the book. I felt like if I was there listening in or seeing what he was doing I would have stopped what I was doing, raised my eyebrow, and seriously doubt what type of person he was and what he had to do with Ofer's disappearance. The stuff he does or says... he's so suspicious! I mean WOW. This guy... How can you not question his motives?

So it definitely kept my attention. I really liked that this book was a translation from Hebrew. I liked that the book's main character, Avraham, referenced a couple of times about how come there wasn't any Hebrew crime novels or something to that affect. And here this book is. I really enjoyed the feel of the book and the intelligent way about it (in a good way). It kept me interested from start to finish and that's all you can really hope for in any book. I am so surprised by the number of surprises in this book which might not make sense but it is true. More accurately I am surprised by the twists because there oh so good twists people. They make me so happy it's crazy. It feels like they come out of left field or something. It makes you think.

I really wonder how this series is going to continue because it did have two POV's for this first book. One was an investigator and another was someone close to the person that everyone was looking for. Is the author planning on continuing with that theme or is it going to be based solely on the life of Avraham Avraham? Also, with that ending... What's going to happen with that!? Such a crazy ending. I absolutely loved it. I feel like the author might just leave it like that but then again it's like you can;t possibly leave it like that... I really enjoyed almost every aspect of this book. The feel of it, it's characters, and the intelligent way about it. It's just so good. I hope to continue on with this series and to read more books by this author.

About the Author

D. A. Mishani (born in 1975) is an Israeli crime writer, editor and literary scholar, specializing in the history of detective fiction. 

His first detective novel, "The missing file", was published in Hebrew in 2011. Translation rights for the novel, the first in a crime series featuring police inspector Avraham Avraham, were sold to more than 10 territories. The American edition of "The missing file" will be published by HarperCollins on April 2013.

D. A. Mishani lives with his wife and two children in Tel Aviv, and writes the second novel in the series, "Possibility of violence".