Ten years after the drowning death of her daughter in the Colorado, Eleanor Clay subsists
finding corpses for Bristlecone Springs PD, until the day she finds three-year-old Lizzie, living but left-for-dead in a culvert under the railroad tracks.
There is plot, and then there is story. In FOUND by Irene Cooper, the parameters of the crime novel provide a map through which characters encroach upon one anotherâs territories and disturb the ground. Plot pushes Eleanor out of her dark apartment and compels her to face the violence others read about, and sometimes, even unwittingly, perpetrate. Like Eleanor, we look for a villain, quietly suspecting trouble is closer than imaginedâmaybe, if we admit it, within ourselves.
Ten years after the drowning death of her daughter in the Colorado, Eleanor Clay subsists
finding corpses for Bristlecone Springs PD, until the day she finds three-year-old Lizzie, living but left-for-dead in a culvert under the railroad tracks.
There is plot, and then there is story. In FOUND by Irene Cooper, the parameters of the crime novel provide a map through which characters encroach upon one anotherâs territories and disturb the ground. Plot pushes Eleanor out of her dark apartment and compels her to face the violence others read about, and sometimes, even unwittingly, perpetrate. Like Eleanor, we look for a villain, quietly suspecting trouble is closer than imaginedâmaybe, if we admit it, within ourselves.
The image permeates the membrane and flashes, in breaths, when sheâs awake as well as when she sleeps: it is only the two of them on the bus. The galloping vista from the window varies in geography but never in color: it is a psychedelic rendering of the coastal town of her childhood; it is a painted sandscape of a desert in the southwest; the colors: a saturated red, ochre, the blue of a pulsing vein; all undulating at speed, at shattering breakneck speed, toward an edge, an end, toward the drop. Awake or asleep, when they reach the sucking lip, she is drenched.
The martial blare of the telephone breaks the dark surface of the room, and the dream divides, disperses, retreats into the deep of Eleanor Clayâs bones, absorbs into skin, settles in the limbic recesses tucked behind reason.
âHello?â
âEleanor, itâs Gordon. Listen, I think itâs time we brought you in on the Lizzie Barrett case. Weâre at the train station.â
âWhatâve you got?â
âNothing, not a thing, thatâs just it. I hate to give up on a missing three-year-old, but weâre about out of time. Best case scenario, you come up with nothing, too.â
Even as Detective Gordon Stanislaus said the words, he knew Eleanor would do her job successfully. He didnât make the call until that outcome was all but inevitable. She would find the child, and that the child would be dead, case closed.
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She found small things, easily lost. An earring backing in silvery late summer grass, a key at the beach. Her ability to recover the small and precious missing thingâa  domestic superpower. If the object were to be found, she would. Or it would find her. Eleanor didnât search so much as make herself available, put her body and its senses in the way of the lost article until a glint or break in the pattern of the landscape drew her attention. Every recovery felt like a conclusion. Restored to the one who suffered the loss, the object fell tracelessly from her consciousness, as if it had never held it.
Eleanor found the first child, small and precious and missed, months after Freya drowned but before Emmett and Levi moved to Denver, away from Bristlecone Springs. The lost thing was not hers, but as with the jewelry and the keys, the finding was a certainty, a fact to breathe into being.
The child was dead, of course. They would be, these small people sheâd been discovering on behalf of the Bristlecone Springs Police Department for the last decade or so, eighteen children to date. Eleanor had been called in to  find number nineteen, which meant that the detectives were not expecting to find the missing little one alive. Eleanor didnât show up until all other options had been exercised.
A flash of red, a thread of yellow. In the bus station, Eleanor pulled from between and behind two rows of lockers at the rear of the terminal a chunky knit red sweater, about the size of a composition notebook, a yellow canary embroidered on the front.
âSheâs not here, but sheâs not gone,â said Eleanor. A terrible force flapped her ribcage.
Stanislaus gave orders to the uniformed police. âTalk to the drivers and the ticket agent again.â This was their third visit to the station since the childâs father had reported her gone.
âSheâs not gone. Give me someone to go look by the river.â Eleanor didnât elaborate.
Sheâs not gone. âWell,â said Stanislaus, âsheâs not here.â And they were nowhere, he thought. The Amber Alert drew nothing credible. The sweater was new evidence. There might be more, he could retrace and review, put the dog to better use. But it was Eleanor whoâd found it, not his regular team, and experience said that meant only one thing. We got nothing, he thought.
âYeah, okay, Eleanor. Drubbs!â Stanislaus signaled to his detective and a uniform. âGo with Eleanor. She thinks the river.â In all these years, he still felt a freight elevator drop into his bowels whenever Eleanor said she  had something. Heâd never known her not to come up with a  body, and if Eleanorâs antennae were tingling, a body was all he anticipated now. Heâd never feel at ease around that woman, but he couldnât, and wouldnât, deny her record. Macabre talent, she had, and not much else, having lost one kid to the Roaring Fork, and another, plus the husband, to fallout.
âBring the dog.â
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Found by Irene Cooper is one of those books whose title holds more than one meaning. When a serial killer keeps abducting children in her town, Eleanor Clay must battle her own past while speaking to families of the children who have gone missing. Amongst the gruesome, horrific elements of the job of finding corpses that Eleanor holds with the police department, readers also get to see how nuanced grief can be. Cooper also introduces readers to a large cast of characters that approach this solemn task based on their own experiences with death and grief. In this, Cooper reminds all readers about the humanity that is sometimes lacking when it comes to crime novels.
I read this book in a day because I found it so interesting and well-written. From the first page, I was completely taken in by the style of writing, and this never faltered throughout the novel. Cooper adeptly captures a lot of the human experience of grief which is what brings warmth to the story despite the dark contents.
One of the best parts of the novel is the amount of characters that are introduced. Each one brings a new piece to the story and to the investigations. It also opens readers up to questioning what the twist will be while also keeping the truth held at a distance. I did not find this novel to be predictable, and each new character truly brought nuance and heart to the plot.
Something I struggled with while reading it was abrupt changes in time. For the contents, it made sense since this is often how memory works, but it made it difficult to track somethings.
Overall, I would suggest this book to anyone interested in crime novels. I do think Found brings a different perspective to the characters that are so often painted as heroes without us stopping to consider their own thoughts.