Crime Fiction LAST GIRL MISSING with K.L. Murphy

She wanted to avenge her father. She needed to save herself.

When Detective Callie Forde is called to the home of a missing teenaged girl, she doesn’t initially suspect foul play. Hampstead is a quiet college town. It’s safe—if you don’t count the other girl. But as the hours wear on with no sign of Natalie, the police are forced to consider the teenager might have been abducted.

No one is more surprised than Callie when all their leads are eerily similar to that of another case, the five-year-old cold case that ended with a botched investigation, a shooting, and her father in a wheelchair.

Determined not to make the same mistakes he made, Callie races to find the girl, avenge her father, and maybe, stop history from repeating itself.

K.L. Murphy recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss her latest crime fiction, LAST GIRL MISSING.

K.L. Murphy

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?

Yes! This book is inspired by a real-life moment of terror thinking my daughter had not come home from a babysitting job with a new family. She did (spoiler alert) but my heart was racing before I knew that. My relief morphed into that “what if” moment that is the beginning of every book for me.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?

First, this is the beginning of a series and while I have written standalones, Her Sister’s Death (Dec 2022) and the forthcoming The Great Forgotten (June of 2025), I love being able to spend time with the same characters for a while. The setting for the Callie Forde Mysteries is a small town and that’s a little what it feels like. The characters are my friends and neighbors and there’s something comforting about being with them. Right now, this series is slated for three books, but I hope to see more in Callie’s future.

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?

Not one in particular but all the movies that deal with someone going missing and the terror that brings to the family and friends searching for them.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

Yes and no. I had an idea of who Callie was but what makes her different is the dysfunction in her family as a result of her father’s injuries on the job. Since his paralysis, he’s a changed man–as is the family as a result. This subplot runs throughout the book. I do have a good friend who is paralyzed and while John Forde is his own man, I think it’s fair to say that his depression and apathy are something many people struggle with at one moment in time or another. Callie’s love for her father is different from what I’ve seen before, and it’s a story I wanted to tell.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?

I hope they take away that my characters are about family and that one doesn’t have to have the perfect family to find happiness and joy in each day. I hope they recognize that my characters are not flawless, that they make mistakes and pick themselves up, and that they’ll do so again.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?

Two big projects. The first, The Great Forgotten (coming in June of 2025), is historical suspense and inspired by the deadliest train crash in U.S. history. The crash, which took place in 1918 Nashville, killed more than one hundred passengers and crew and injured many more. The story follows five men: one engineer, one porter, one farmer, one salesman, and one thief, in the days leading up to and surrounding the crash.

I’m also hard at work on the second in the Callie Forde series, The Murderer’s Girl (July 2025) in which a fifteen-year-old case is turned on its head when new video evidence clears the man convicted of the brutal double murder. The only problem is, the innocent man is dead. When the press and a scrappy podcaster descend on the small town of Hampstead, tempers flare and fear spreads, and Detective Callie Forde feels the pressure to find the real killer before they can act again. I’m having a lot of fun writing the second in this series–that being with old friends again thing. Also, it’s really fun to imagine and inserts podcast episodes and transcripts.