The meaning of this book's title is not fully evident until the very end of the book. At this advanced point in the series Emma and Miles are married and they're busy squabbling about where to live and house renovations. Miles is working on his own as his deputy has taken a sort of sabbatical and no one knows exactly where he has gone. Emma is convinced that there is more to some cases of missing teenage girls than adolescent runaway shenanigans.

The problems facing print journalism are also evident in Alpine. Emma's staff is crabby and worried, and she's not sure about the future of the Advocate. There's a lot of different things happening in this book, and it felt as if it was sort of all over the place. I feel like this is more of an effort to wind up a lengthy series than to construct a mystery in its own right.