Review: Grief and danger collide in 'Shaw Connolly Lives to Tell'

San Francisco Chronicle​

12-07-2025

Sixteen years have passed since Shaw Connolly's teenage sister, Thea, slipped out of their family home in rural Maine to party with friends and never came home.
Shaw (short for Shawnee), now a fingerprint expert for law enforcement agencies, is certain that her sister was murdered, but she is obsessed with learning where she was buried.
More Information
Shaw Connolly Lives To Tell
By Gillian French
(Minotaur Books; 352 pages; $28)
Even now, after all these years, she continues to put up posters and roam the woods of their hometown with a cadaver dog. Her obsession takes a toll not only on her but on her family, driving her husband away and traumatizing her two boys.
But in author Gillian French's 'Shaw Connolly Lives To Tell,' Shaw isn't the only one who is obsessed. Someone is obsessed with her.
His name is Anders Jansen, and he calls Shaw frequently, often at odd hours. He taunts her about Thea, revealing details that hint at his involvement in the girl's disappearance — but never enough to justify an arrest.
As their cat-and-mouse game continues, the phone calls become more menacing, and soon he starts following her and making vague threats against her family. When Shaw grows alarmed enough to get a protective order, he violates it, giving police a justification to make an arrest. But now he's on the run, the police can't find him, and the calls continue.
Meanwhile, Shaw has a job to do. She assists police investigating the death of a man who was bludgeoned while walking his dog. She is called to assist with an arson fire in a vacant building. But then there is another arson fire. And another. And another. When the arsonist burns down the church Shaw attended as a child, she and the readers wonder if Anders could be setting the fires.
This well-written, emotionally wrenching novel is not a mystery in the traditional sense. It is apparent early on that Thea is dead and that Anders killed her. The tension lies in how far Shaw will go to learn where she is buried, what Anders will do if she persists, and the price the people she loves will pay for her obsession.