ï»BookLife by Publishers Weekly Comparable Titles: Emma Donoghue's Room and Lisa Jewell's Then She Was Gone
"(Valenti) provides In Cold Blood-like depth to this fictional account" -- Kirkus Reviews
"If you're not losing sleep over what happened to little Bobby Goodson, I don't know what book you're reading" -- Toni Woodruff, Independent Book Review
"Valenti's background in journalism shines through . . . the result being a no-frills, unflinching look at grief and uncertainty that lingers long after the final page" -- BookLife, Publishers Weekly
A frantic mother tells cops her kids have vanished in broad daylight from outside a suburban Long Island market on Halloween. Inspired by one of the oldest unsolved missing child cases in U.S. history [the 1955 disappearance of Steven Damman] and other worldwide missing child cases like it, For Nothing Is Hidden, is a cautionary tale spanning more than 50 years -- from the initial disappearance of little Bobby Goodson to its impact on the already tenuous marriage of his small-town, middle America-raised parents en route to the unlikeliest of resolutions decades later. You'll think you'll know it all from the start. Truth is, you won't.
The debut novel by John A. Valenti 3rd, a veteran national award-winning journalist for the Long Island, New York-based Newsday.
Valenti's decades of insightful, in-depth reporting shine through as this novel explores the often untold strains of a criminal investigation, peeling back layers on the marriage of Driscoll and Colleen Goodson as police and the media pore through the smallest details of their lives in an attempt to find their missing son. Valenti ties in real crimes of the day -- the so-called "Shooting of the Century" killing of millionaire William Woodward Jr. by his socialite wife Ann; the famed "Boy in the Box" mystery -- in a seamless weave of events that blur the line between fact and fiction in this literary, historic crime novel.
As BookLife, Publishers Weekly, said of the debut: "Valenti skillfully probes the heartbreaking tragedy of missing child cases: the slow, unraveling grief of not knowing, the persistent hope that tomorrow may bring news, and the quiet terror of imagining the worst, all colliding against the exhausting machinery of police procedure, by necessity methodical and impersonal . . . There's a clean precision in how the investigation unfolds and a restraint in tone that sidesteps melodrama."
Industry Reviews
"(Valenti) provides In Cold Blood-like depth to this fictional account" -- Kirkus Reviews
"Valenti's background in journalism shines through . . . the result being a no-frills, unflinching look at grief and uncertainty that lingers long after the final page" -- BookLife, Publishers Weekly
"Extremely strong characters . . . The shifting perspectives do a great job in cultivating suspicion. We really never know who to trust" -- Quarterfinalist, ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition
As BookLife, Publishers Weekly, said of the debut: "Valenti skillfully probes the heartbreaking tragedy of missing child cases: the slow, unraveling grief of not knowing, the persistent hope that tomorrow may bring news, and the quiet terror of imaging the worst, all colliding against the exhausting machinery of police procedure, by necessity methodical and impersonal . . . There's a clean precision in how the investigation unfolds and a restraint in tone that sidesteps melodrama.
"Using multiple perspectives -- cops and journalists, family and neighbors -- and anchoring the story in true historical events, Valenti builds a grounded narrative that feels at once immediate and universal."
