Visit The Missing website here.

When Boston CSI Darby McCormick finds a raving and emaciated woman hiding at the scene of a violent kidnap, she runs a DNA search to identify the Jane Doe. The result confirms that the woman was abducted five years earlier and has somehow managed to escape from the dungeon in which she’s been caged.

With a teenage couple also missing and the Jane Doe seriously ill, the clock is ticking for Darby as she hunts for the dungeon before anyone else disappears or dies. And when the FBI takes over the investigation, it becomes clear that a sadistic serial killer has been on the prowl for decades – and is poised to strike again at any moment. A killer with links to horrors that Darby has desperately tried to bury in her past…

The Missing Film Competition - THE WINNER!

WARNING: These trailers contain images that some viewers may find disturbing.

'The Missing' by Liam Garvo

'The Missing' by Joseph Barnet & Phillippa James

'The Missing' by Daniel Birt & Chris Regan

'The Missing' by Holly Chant

'The Missing' by Darren Culley

'The Missing' by Andrew Ireland

'The Missing' by Christopher Kemble

'The Missing' by Roxi Khan

'The Missing' by Crispin Lain

'The Missing' by David Smith & James Weston

'The Missing' by James R. C. Smith

'The Missing' by Daniel Swainsbury

'The Missing' by Mark Triller

'The Missing' by C Watkiss

'The Missing' by Lynsey Yarnell

The Missing Film Competition is now CLOSED.

Read three Extracts from The Missing here! Click on the links below.

Extract 1
Extract 2
Extract 3

Chris Mooney answers our searching questions...

How did The Missing come about?
I had an idea about a story involving three teenage girls who witness a vicious murder. One of the girls, Darby McCormick, is the daughter of a cop. I kept asking myself “How would the daughter of a cop respond to this? Would she know what to do?” The choices Darby makes end up changing her life and the life of her two friends.

The Missing is a very filmic novel – did you picture it in such a way when you were writing it? Have films influenced your writing in any way?
Books tend to unfold like a movie in my head. It’s just the way my brain works. I’ve always been attracted to visual writers – Thomas Harris and Stephen King especially. Movies had a huge impact on me creatively as well.

Do you go to the cinema much? What films attract you to go?
I really enjoy big, blockbuster thrillers that have a great story and great characters. Casino Royale is a good example. I was never a huge James Bond fan – I grew up with Roger Moore as James Bond – but I loved the way Daniel Craig played Bond. The acting, the story and the characters, it was all really well done. 

What kind of research do you normally conduct for your books?
I did a ton of forensic research for The Missing, most of which had to be scrapped during revisions. It was too much technical stuff. You get to a point where you have to remind yourself that you’re writing a story and not a handbook on forensics.

What I do now is write the book, and then when the forensics and police procedural stuff pops up, I pass the questions on to some of the experts I’ve met in the field. You can waste a lot of time researching things that never [make their] way into the book. It’s better to write a draft, then do some research. Forensics is changing all the time.

What I find more challenging is trying to maintain the balance between fiction and what really happens inside a crime lab. For example, in CSI, the lab technicians get DNA results in an hour. That doesn’t happen in real life. And the people who work in the lab don’t carry guns and interrogate suspects. I’m constantly reworking things in my books to try to make things as realistic as possible, but in the end, it’s fiction.

Which authors do you admire? Did any of them influence your writing?
Stephen King was the one who made me want to be a writer. My parents wouldn’t let me see The Shining but they let me read the book. I read it in one night – I was twelve at the time. When I closed that book, I couldn’t sleep. I was shaking. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a writer. Thomas Harris is a huge influence, as is Dennis Lehane. The guy is a genius. Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Lee Child and John Connolly always continue to impress and amaze me. 

If you could give any advice to the young film-makers making the book, what would it be?
I’d say your best bet would be to “tease” the audience. Read the book and pay close attention to the ending. The most visual moments – the most terrifying moments – occur there.

What’s next for Chris Mooney?
I’ve just finished a book called The Secret Friend. It brings back Darby McCormick, the main character from The Missing. In the new novel, I have Darby investigating a case and she crosses paths with Malcolm Fletcher, a former FBI profiler who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.  

Chris Mooney, whose latest thriller The Missing is out on 3 May, goes under interrogation.

What makes a perfectly nice and seemingly normal guy write such a gruesome and terrifying novel?
The honest answer is I don’t know. I’ve always been attracted to stories where good, moral people are forced to confront awful events and how it affects them. The other part, I think, on some level, [is that] I like to scare people.

Where do you get your inspiration?
In terms of ideas for stories, they come to me randomly. I’ll be doing some mundane task like folding the laundry when that creative voice whispers in the back of my head, “What if...” And then the idea goes away, and if it’s any good, it keeps knocking on the door, trying to get my attention. As for inspiration for the actual writing process, my literary heroes are Stephen King and Thomas Harris. I want to create riveting stories.

Do you scare yourself sometimes when you come up with really horrific scenes and how do you wind down from writing these?
I don’t scare myself, but I’ll have these moments when I’ll write a particularly disturbing scene and then ask myself “Where did that come from?” For example, early on in The Missing, my main character, Darby McCormick, is looking around the home of a missing teenager. It’s dark out. Darby is running her flashlight over the porch and she sees a woman hiding behind some garbage cans. The woman is dressed in rags and has been nearly starved to death. When a police officer reaches out to help this woman, she bites him in the wrist. I had no idea who this woman was or what she was doing there. That whole scene took me completely by surprise. 

Have you ever worked in this area? If not, how much and what kind of research do you do for your novels? 
I haven’t worked in either forensics or profiling, but I was always fascinated with the two fields. The forensic stuff is constantly changing. As for research, what I do is write a draft of the book to see where the story is going, and then I approach my contacts and ask them questions. What you quickly find out is that the way both fields are portrayed in television and film are vastly different from real life. For example, in the TV show CSI, forensic investigators carry guns and interview suspects. DNA results take an hour or less. That doesn’t happen in real world.

What do you enjoy reading for pleasure? What has been your favourite book to come out in the last year, and why?
I’ll read anything by Stephen King, Thomas Harris, John Connolly, Mike Connelly, Lee Child and George Pelecanos. Dennis Lehane is a genius. I love his books. I try to read a lot outside the genre. I particularly enjoy Jodi Picoult’s novels. She’s that rare writer who has the perfect blend of both literary and commercial instincts. As for the best book I read recently, I’d have to say William Landay’s The Strangler. It was stunning. 

What is the scariest book you have ever read?
It would be a tie between The Shining and The Silence of the Lambs. I read The Shining when I was around twelve years old, and to this day I remember being afraid to go to sleep. The Silence of the Lambs is the best thriller ever written. It continues to amaze – and unsettle – me.

Where did the character of Darby come from is she truly a fictional character or based around someone you know?
She’s a completely fictional creation. She’s not based on anyone I know, but Darby does share personality traits of women I admire in my life. Darby works hard, she’s smart, she’s not afraid to speak her mind and she’s certainly not afraid of confrontation. Darby shares my dark Irish Catholic humour and outlook on life, but other than that, we’re completely different.

Your books are all set around Boston would you ever consider writing a thriller with London as the setting?
Absolutely. In fact, in the next book of the Darby McCormick series, The Secret Friend, one of the main characters lives in London. There’s a book coming down the road that will take place in London.

The Missing Film Trailer competition (see www.themissingbook.co.uk) has attracted a great deal of attention. Are there any plans to make The Missing into a film?
My agent and I are quietly exploring a few options. As a writer, you want to make sure the book gets into good hands, because once you sign over the rights, you lose all control. 

Who do you see playing the role of DSI Darby McCormick?
I’d love to see Julianne Moore play Darby. She’s the closet to Darby physically, and Julianne Moore is one of my favourite actresses. I think she could bring a lot of dimension to Darby’s character.

What are you working on now? What is next for you?
Another Darby McCormick novel called The Secret Friend. Two college students are abducted, disappear for months, and then their bodies are found floating in Boston’s Charles River. Darby is working on the case when she uncovers a key piece of evidence and meets Malcolm Fletcher, a former FBI profiler who is now on the Bureau’s Most Wanted list. I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out.

“Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”

One of the more interesting things about being a writer is doing book tours and answering fan mail, most of it now in the form of email, thanks to the wonders of the internet.  The two questions I’m always asked are “Where do you get your ideas?” and “Why do you write these kind of stories?”  Other variations of the last question include “What happened during your childhood to make you want to write these kinds of books?” and “You seem like such a nice person.  Why do you want to write stories that scare people to death?” What people are really asking me is “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”

During my childhood, before the dawn of cable television, we had an extremely popular weekend movie program called Creature Double Feature.  On Saturday afternoons, they’d run the Godzilla movies along with the real cheesy black-and-white horror flicks with titles like It Came . . . FROM THE SEA!  They were horrible, low budget affairs – I mean, anyone could tell the creature from the sea was a man in a scuba suit decorated with bits of seaweed – but I loved them dearly.  The good stuff wasn’t shown until 11 on Saturday nights.

Fortunately for me, Saturday night was date night for my parents, and I was left in the care of the cool grandmother, Claire, who would let me stay up late and watch some of these truly scary movies.  It was during one of these Saturday nights when I saw a TV commercial for a movie called The Shining.  To this day, I remember sitting under my blanket, watching the elevator doors of the Outlook hotel parting open to a sea of blood.  I remember watching a man holding an axe limping his way through a violent snowstorm, chasing after a terrified boy who was running through a hedge maze.  I was eleven years old and had never been so scared.  So I did what any normal child would have done: I begged father to see the movie.

My father was the parent you went to when you wanted something.  My mother was naturally suspicious of everything that came out of my mouth, especially anything fun.  So I waited until I was alone and asked my father if he’d take me to see it.

“What’s it rated?”

“R.”

“That means it only for adults.”

“It also means an adult can take someone under 17 to see it.  Please take me to see it.”

I suspected my father had a couple of beers in him because he smiled and said, “Tell you what.  Your mother wants to see that movie next weekend.  I’ll check it out and get back to you.”

The following weekend, when I heard the front doors open, I ran upstairs to talk to my father.  My mother answered the question: “There’s no way in hell you’re going to see that movie, Christopher.”

I had suspected that, so I did a little investigating and found out there was a book based on the movie.  My friend’s mother had the book but hid her copy so my friend couldn’t get his hands on it.  But he told me it was by this guy named Stephen King.  I didn’t live near a bookstore, but the Lynn Public Library was close by, so I called ahead and asked if they had a copy.  They did and agreed to hold it for me.

I asked my father if I could read the book.  My father was generally open to me reading anything but this time had to think about it.  We had an incident over the summer, my father and I.  I had got my hands on a book called Jaws (another movie he refused to let me see), and when I was reading the book, I came across a word I didn’t recognize.  The rule in the Mooney household was if you didn’t know a word, you had to look it up in the dictionary.  The word wasn’t listed, so I went to ask my father.

“What’s the word?”

“Humping,” I said.  “What’s it mean?”

That book disappeared from my hands.

My father gave in and took me to the library.  He waited out in the car and I went it to check out the book from this woman who, I’m pretty sure, babysat Moses.  I gave her my library card.  She looked at me, looked at The Shining, then looked back and me and said something like “Dearie, there’s no way you’re checking out this book.”  I brought my father inside and the two of them got into a heated argument that ended with me getting the book.  Holding it on the way home, as corny as it sounds, felt like magic.

I read The Shining straight through the afternoon and well into the night.  I couldn’t put it down.  As an added bonus, I couldn’t sleep that night either – I was convinced my bedroom was haunted with a ghost who looked like the old lady in the Overlook’s bathtub.  It was then, at that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.  I wanted to write books people couldn’t put down.  I wanted to scare people.  I’ve pretty much spent a good majority of my time trying to figure out a way to make it happen.

The Missing was the first book where I didn’t know the ending.  I knew about the villain, the “man without a face.”  I knew he had been abducting young women for years.  I knew that they had disappeared.  Their bodies had never been found.  But I really didn’t know what he was doing with them.  I was writing on my front porch and, truth be told, drinking a little too much bourbon when the idea hit me.  I wrote over the course of a weekend and called my agent, who had been waiting patiently for me to finish the book.

“I figured out the ending,” I said.
 
“Great!  What is it?”

I told him.  When I finished, there was a long pause.  (Note to future writers: when an agent or editor does this, the news is generally not good.)

“You don’t like it,” I said.

“No, I was just . . .”

“What?”

“I love the ending – it’s absolutely terrifying.  I was just wondering how you come up with these ideas.”

My favorite fan letter of all time is this one, and pretty much sums everything up:

Dear Mr. Mooney,

I’m writing to you in regards to your book Deviant Ways.  I finished it in two days and I couldn’t sleep.  You are seriously one disturbed individual to write things like that.  It’s clear you have deep psychological problems, and you should have them treated, provided a therapist would treat you.  The book was sick, sick, sick. 

Seriously, what’s wrong with you?

Sincerely,
Susan

P.S.  When is your next book coming out?