THE LAST STONE is a difficult book to read for more reasons than one. Mostly it’s the subject matter.

Two little girls, 12 and 10, go missing in 1975. In 2018 Lloyd Welch is finally convicted of their murders. It is what happened to those little girls, which Lloyd tells us over and over again, that is a horror to picture as we read.

Mark Bowden structures the majority of THE LAST STONE with actual transcripts of Welch's interviews with police over nearly 2 years. They are repetitive, tedious. And for all that, the whole truth is never learned, just enough to convict him.

In the end, police can only theorize about what actually happened. So that is how Bowden concludes his book, with the various theories. They are all heartbreaking.