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The Nature of Our Existence
Have You Seen Him follows a weary public defender who discovers a missing-person ad bearing his childhood face and a stranger’s name, leading him to unravel a buried past, a vanished family, and secrets hidden by his adoptive father. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Soon after we meet the book’s main character, David, he’s sifting through his mail and sees a missing child ad with his own face. The inspiration for the book is a scenario somewhat similar to that—I was sorting my mail and saw an ad for a child who went missing when he was 10. The computer-progressed image showed him at 40 years old. I thought about how this boy’s family had been searching for three decades, never giving up trying to find him. The faces haunted me. I tore it out and carried it around in my bag for a while, then sat down to write a story about it.
Was the character’s backstory something you always had, or did it develop as you were writing?
When I first began this story, I was in the process of reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a nonfiction book that chronicles actual events in medical science. I took a few facts from that book and created a “what if” scenario—imagining what would have happened if a number of things had played out differently than what actually occurred in the true story. The backstory developed organically from there.
Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?
I do think that at some point in life we each come to some wise realization—about ourselves, our purpose, the nature of our existence—that deeply impacts us and points the way forward. It could be as simple as a brief encounter with a wise stranger, an event that forces us to rise to the occasion, or even a long, winding journey to trusting in our own strength. I believe we each have key moments that, in retrospect, put us on a certain path to finding out who we really are. In his quest to find his true family, amidst all the action and adventure, David deals with all of the above.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
Have You Seen Him is the first in a trilogy, so it’s back to my notebook to work on the second installment. Readers say the ending is satisfying, but I also left a few questions open, so it’s pen to page to see what happens next with these characters! The goal for this new book is fall of 2026!
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
For David Byrdsong, life is a series of daily obligations. An attorney, he lacks both ambition and the ability to commit to a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Gayle. Abandoned by his family at an airport when he was eleven, he learned to blunt his feelings, despite his subsequent adoption by a loving couple.
Until one day, when David discovers his own face in a missing child ad. Suddenly driven to uncover the truth about his past, he is forced to tap into his inner strength as he encounters corporate conspiracies, murdered bystanders, and distressing suspicions about the only family he’s ever really trusted. David enlists Gayle’s help—and the help of an unlikely stranger with secrets of his own—as he attempts to find his true family, whoever they are.
Thrilling, exploratory, and propulsive, Have You Seen Him is a story of lost identity, dangerous secrets, and a deeply personal pursuit of the truth.
Have You Seen Him
Kimberly Lee’s Have You Seen Him opens with a brutal bank scene and spirals into a decades-later mystery that tangles grief, identity, and moral reckoning into a slow-burn thriller. The story follows David Byrdsong, a weary public defender who discovers a missing-person ad bearing his childhood face and a stranger’s name. That bizarre discovery unravels a buried past, a vanished family, secrets hidden by his adoptive father, and a network of people who’ve been searching for him for decades. Lee layers the suspense with emotional depth, flipping between timelines and perspectives to show how loss ripples across generations.
I was hooked from the first chapter. Lee writes with an intensity that sneaks up on you. Her sentences are clean but punch hard, and her dialogue feels lived-in, not polished. The tension never drops, but it’s not all fear and chase scenes. It’s the quiet unraveling of a man realizing his life might have been built on a lie. Some sections hit me right in the chest, especially the flashbacks to David’s childhood. There’s a sadness there, a kind of ache that sticks. I found myself pausing just to think after some of the reveals. The pacing dips here and there, but that slower rhythm gave me time to absorb the emotion under the mystery.
What I admired most was how human the story felt, even when it got dark. Lee doesn’t rely on shock for impact. She writes about fear the way it really works—slow, creeping, sometimes disguised as routine. The villains aren’t cartoonish, and even the side characters have small flickers of truth. David’s hesitation, his guilt, his strange calm in chaos made me want to shake him. But maybe that’s the point. He’s not an action hero. He’s someone who’s survived by pretending he’s fine, and that resonated with me.
Have You Seen Him is about finding yourself after everyone else thought you were lost. I’d recommend it to readers who love stories that balance plot with heart, especially fans of psychological thrillers like Gone Girl or Everything I Never Told You. If you like your thrillers with a pulse and a conscience, this one’s worth every page.
Pages: 270 | ASIN : B0F9TJYN8V
LITERARY TITAN 