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Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
The setting is modern day London and library worker Jasmin Bazley is engaged to scientist Ben Watson. But Ben has vanished even though they were to be married in the near future. Ben's last notes indicate that he was visiting a shell fish farm. Now, Ben has traveled to various places throughout Britain with his highly-talented but autistic sister, Sam, and she has created pictures of the different places they visited. Day by day, Jasmin puzzles through the evidence that surrounds Ben's disappearance, talking with the police who seem less than helpful. She also reaches out to Ben's co-worker, William, and his longtime best friend, David, a doctor who has served in Afghanistan. She turns his professional laptop computer over to the industry where he worked and pours over his personal laptop, trying to guess his password. Ben was working on a drug that would help autistic people like his sister, Sam, but this drug which Ben calls "benjmasin" after himself, Jasmin, and Sam, may have been altered with heroin or other dangerous narcotics. The use of "benjmasin" on soldiers serving in Afghanistan has not been positive due to the addition of those narcotics. What was Ben really up to in his scientific work?
"The Truth about Ben" is basically well-written and offers great suspense as Ben's fiance, Jasmin, goes about trying to find him and what he was actually doing with the drug he was developing. But the ending with the villain and his family revealed is not the conclusion that this basically great story requires. Jasmin, Ben's parents and sister, David, William, and lesser characters such as Jasmin's close friend Melissa are totally believable and help the story move to its less than exciting finale. "The Truth about Ben" could be a thriller that readers will long remember once its last section is rewritten.
