All the Dangerous Things

Isabelle Drake's baby son, Mason, vanished from his crib one night while she and her husband slept in the next room. A year on, the police have nothing, the case has gone cold, and Isabelle barely sleeps. She lives on catnaps and on stretches of time she cannot account for.

She spends her days talking about Mason to anyone willing to listen. When Waylon Spencer, a true crime podcaster, proposes a series on the disappearance, she agrees. Together they reopen the case, and the reporting pulls her back through her marriage, her version of that night, and the childhood death of her sister.

This is a psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator. The chapters alternate between the present-day search for Mason and Isabelle's earlier life, so the past keeps pressing on the investigation.

The tension comes from doubt as much as from the hunt for a kidnapper. The deeper the podcast digs, the shakier Isabelle's own testimony looks. Who took Mason is one open question. The other is how far a narrator can be trusted about a night she slept through.