Little Comfort

by Edwin Hill
This book has been getting a lot of promotion.  It is supposed to be about a Librarian who works to track missing people down.
The woman is a Librarian but she is on leave because she and her boyfriend have become the care givers for her boyfriends niece as the child's mother (the librarian's friend) has run away.
The Librarian, Hester, loves the child but resents that she has become the babysitter and has to give up her job.
She is contacted by a woman whose brother has been missing for years.  The woman says she wants to tell her brother that she plans to sell the family's lake cottage and wants to share the proceeds with him.  The woman gives Hester postcards that she has received over the years from various cities in the U.S., they all have quotes on them which Hester figures out pertain to movies.
She learns that the woman's brother and a young foster boy he befriended ran away together.

The story then switches to the woman's brother and his friend.  It turns out they are living in the city as Hester.  The woman's borther keeps trying to make himself rich by hooking up with rich women but things keep going wrong.  His friend, Gabe, supports them both by being a programmer.  Every time they move the brother insists they change names.  He adopts the identity of dead people.

Hester manages to track the men down because of a photo on the latest postcard.

At this time the brother is trying to woo a socialite.  He thinks he is finally going to make it big with her and have a good life.  However, one day the brother's cover is blown when a good friend of his lover recognizes him as a boy who used to clean and look after her family's lakehouse.  He of course kills her and sets up an army veteran for the crime.

As the story progresses we find that the brother and Gabe originally left around the time a body was found near their house.  They murdered that person and have subsequently killed other people

As the story nears its conclusion the brother has told Gabe to kill Hester but she has been kind to him and he thinks he loves her so he kidnaps her instead.  While he is kidnapping her, unbeknownst to Gabe, the brother is kidanpping the niece.

The story ends at the brother's home.  Gabe ends up killing the brother and is arrested for all the murders.  Hester realizes that the Sister never really wanted to contact her brother she actually wanted him dead so she could inherit all the money from the Lakehouse.

The book was tense.  From the very beginning we knew that the brother was evil and dangerous.  Things were tied together well at the end.  I just don't know why the author bothered to give Hester a career as a Librarian, while it is hyped in the writeups for the books it had no role in the book.