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GONE
by Lisa Gardner
Orion, February 2006
352 pages
9.99GBP
ISBN: 0752873067


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Lisa Gardner burst from the romance genre and into the crime fiction category some years ago now. Despite the overt switch, she has not relinquished heaving passions and burning body parts altogether. Wherever Gardner's characters roam free, so too will ardour.

So if you enjoy scenes of flesh being joined in love (or what passes for it) as well as being torn apart during the commission of nefarious crimes, you will no doubt take to Gardner's stories and her protagonists, former FBI Special Agent Pierce Quincy and his wife, former law officer Rainie Conner.

It is a dark and stormy night in Oregon when Rainie, whom Quincy has left in an attempt to force her to recognise and deal with her alcoholism, goes for a drive and vanishes, leaving her motor running and several of her essential possessions within the car. The automobile is seen by local cops who decide something is drastically wrong.

Pierce Quincy is summoned to the scene and becomes, very briefly 'a person of interest' to the law enforcers. He, in turn, summons his daughter, FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, and her lover, Mac, an investigator from Georgia, to his aid.

It soon becomes apparent that Rainie is the victim of a kidnapping and when the kidnapper demands the meagre sum of $10,000, the Quincys become even more alarmed. Ransom can't be the sole motive for the crime.

Various choice characters are introduced to the tale including an exceptionally pushy journalist, a sad little boy with a violent passion for fire who, after the death of his single mother, was forced onto the foster family merry-go-round. a cop attempting to defend his case from intrusions and orders from unwanted, high-powered investigators, as well as assorted unsanitary villains.

As Gardner gains experience, her books improve. Quite apart from anything else, the egregious errors that proliferated in THE OTHER DAUGHTER are now absent. She has honed her suspense-making talents and the motives she attributes to her characters no longer need quite such a great leap of faith.

No doubt Gardner's fans will find their hearts wracked with pain and sympathy on behalf of that extremely unfortunate profiler, Pierce Quincy, who really shouldn't have to surrender further family members in the author's attempts to provide bloody victims for the entertainment of enthusiastic readers craving mystery, excitement and suspense.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, February 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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