Although it begins as part mystery thriller, part police procedural—The Case of the Missing Mother—the novel evolves into a complicated anatomy of the power of love, imperfect as it is, wounding as it can be. No couple in the novel appears to find the key to satisfying love.

Stan and Joy, despite appearing to have a stable and content marriage, bear deep grudges against each other that regularly create tension and drama. Each of their kids faces a different level of relationship failure. Even Stan and Joy’s own parents were locked into claustrophobic marriages that simmered near anger and violence—and endured only through alcohol and fights. Divorce, calculated infidelities, physical abuse, long periods of chilly silence, distrust, selfishness, disappointment, the dark itch of lust, emotional indifference, the solace of distance, emotional and geographical—overall, the novel seems to dismiss love as a chimerical fantasy.

Ironically, Stan, who broods through most of the novel as a husband who has most likely killed his wife on Valentine’s Day, delivers the novel’s most powerful endorsement of love. This occurs late in the novel (in the scene right before he’s to be arrested for murdering Joy). In his wedding toast at Claire and Troy’s wedding (a marriage long since scuttled by Troy’s casual infidelity), Stan defends the power of love despite its vulnerability.