Missing Person just misses

Patrick Modiano's Missing Person just misses - it's a fun, atmospheric, provocative novel with a great concept - a private detective out of work sets off on a new case, finding his own identity - his memory has been largely erased. Over the course of the novel he makes a series of discoveries through very lucky detective work (the way these things always happen in books and films: they always find the guy they're looking for, who just happens to have a photograph of the next person they're looking for, who just happens to remember that ... ). Unfortunately, the ending of this novel is unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons - most of which is that I think Modiano was just improvising on a theme and had no clear sense of the design of this puzzle. I'll give stuff away here so back off if you plan to read this novel: at the end, the protagonist somehow recollects a big patch of his memory and leaving Paris and heading for the border w/ his wife (girlfriend?) and another couple; they hang out in a chalet in the Alps and then hire a very sketchy guy to bring them across the border into Switzerland. The guy betrays them, and the woman vanishes into the snowy Alps and protagonist moves on (there's a shart last set of chapters in which he goes to a South Pacific island to track down one last clue - a section entire out of keeping w/ the rest of the novel and not necessary). The conceit Modiano is working with is that the loss of memory is parallel to the French self-imposed amnesia about the German occupation and the Vichy government. That's fine as a starting point (or ending point in this case), but starting or ending - what's the point? We don't know why these characters need to cross the border - none seems to be Jewish or active in the resistance. And the ending that has been approached so carefully and deliberately is not a big reveal - there's no big surprise or turnaround that I could see (this novel would probably benefit from a 2nd read, but really ... ). I wish there were more in this novel - but it's not a Bolano or a Sebald or a Pynchon - it's a little romp that has some great moments and many sharply delineated scenes but a plot that's too meandering and an ending that fails to deliver on the promise of the early chapters.