The Only One Left

Two teenage girls sneak off to a big music festival on a large property near the Columbia River Gorge. Then they do a stupid thing—go off with two strangers in their 20’s, on motorcycles, who put roofies in their beer. What happens next is not pretty.m, but it’s worse for one girl. Their tent and car left behind allows Finn to contact the parents. A search starts. Meanwhile baby gorilla Kanoni has a messy bad cold and fever, which worries her mother Neema, their caretaker Grace, Brittany who volunteers there, and the mother of one of the missing girls. In order to hold on to some scrap of sanity while waiting for her daughter to be found, and when her husband had to return to run their boutique business, she stays with Grace to help with the primates. She is also able to improve and augment Grace’s website to make it more productive with less effort. Some clues literally fall into police hands, including a series of cold cases which seem to echo the current missing girls’ situation. Poor Matt and Grace have hardly any time together in this book, given the duties each of them have, and the distance Matt’s case takes him from Evansburg. We get to see the gorillas painting techniques, which was interesting to me. I learn that gorillas can catch measles, and it can be much worse for them if they are exposed to someone unvaccinated who is not yet showing signs of illness. I am not an anti-vaxxer, but the only ones I don’t get are flu (natural immunity) and pneumonia. After I finished the first two books in this series, Koko, a gorilla who might have been part of the inspiration for Neema and this series, died. I eagerly awaited this one, to the point where the minute I read it was available, I pounced and bought it. I did catch a couple of clues early on, but had to wait for the last few chapters in order to be sure. One thing I feared did not happen—but to tell you what that is would be a spoiler. Read it—you won’t regret it. I hope there will be one or two more.

Within this murder mystery, is woven the science of language acquisition of great apes. An interesting mix of fact and fiction leading to a first class read.