Pretty Girls opens with a father addressing his missing daughter in a letter. Julia has been missing for a long time, and Sam Carroll details the moments he and his wife gave up hope. A vet who describes himself as a “man of science,” Paul is so upset with the police’s mishandling of Julia’s disappearance that he investigates facts himself. He details finding a beaten, starved dog, a moment that erased his hope in finding his daughter because seeing such depravity inflicted on an animal revealed to him humanity’s indifference to suffering. Sam’s letters are interspersed throughout the novel and have their own chapter headings to indicate that his narrative presence in the novel is heavily important but merely interstitial.

Claire Scott, age 38, sits at a busy bar while waiting for her husband Paul, a demure and punctilious architect. Paul is late, which is very unlike him, so Claire amuses herself by flirting with the bartender and watching the news about a missing 16-year-old girl named Anna Kilpatrick. Claire and Paul have been married 18 years and are meeting at the bar to celebrate Claire finally getting her ankle bracelet removed.