POSTED: 25 JULY 2010

Chevy Stevens, Still Missing

Allen & Unwin | 277pp paperback | $32.99

Still Missing, Chevy Stevens’ first novel, is well crafted, well written ... and a very good story.

Annie O’Sullivan, a realtor on Vancouver Island, is abducted. Nothing unusual in that for a crime novel. What is unusual is that right from go you know that the victim has survived, and that pretty soon you know who did it as well.

The story, you then perceive, is not a whodunnit, but a study of survival. About how a person becomes controlled by a psychopath — trained to submit like a Pavlov dog through venomous punishments and despotic routines — and how that person manages to save a scrap of “self” in such demeaning and paralysing circumstances.

And it is a great study of the resolve and pure guts of a woman driven to act as she would never have expected to do, and how — when it is all over — she tries, despite paranoia and grief, to re-establish something of a life for herself.

The laser light that Stevens fixes on the twisted mind and what it can do, and the insights into survival that she delivers through Annie’s actions are enough, on their own, to make this an interesting read.

But hang on...

As Annie discloses the torments of her year in captivity to her silent psychiatrist, and talks about her post-captive life, something begins to niggle, and something is not right. Someone else must have helped “the Freak” — but who?

There are several possibles — friends, family, lover — and all are equally distressing to Annie. She fights her suspicions, but inevitably succumbs to doubts which wrack her with guilt.

So, after all, it is a whodunnit thriller, and one with the most unexpected outcome.

Stevens’ story-within-a-story-within-another is cleverly constructed and gripping to the end. A great debut novel and hopefully the first of many to come.