Gone

November 21, 2005
A terrifying woman-in-jeopardy plot propels Gardner's latest thriller, in which child advocate and PI Lorraine "Rainie" Conner's fate hangs in the balance. Rainie, a recovering alcoholic with a painful past (who previously appeared in Gardner's The Third Victim
, The Next Accident
and The Killing Hour
) is kidnapped from her parked car one night in coastal Oregon. The key players converge on the town of Bakersville to solve the mystery of her disappearance: Rainie's husband, Quincy, a semiretired FBI profiler whose anguish over Rainie undercuts his high-level experience with kidnappers; Quincy's daughter, Kimberley, a rising star in the FBI who flies in from Atlanta; Oregon State Police Sgt. Det. Carlton Kincaid; local sheriff Shelly Atkins; and abrasive federal agent Candi Rodriguez, who specializes in hostage negotiation. Gardner suspensefully intercuts the complicated maneuvering of this bickering team with graphic scenes of Rainie bravely struggling with her violent, sadistic captor. When the rescuers make a misstep, he raises the stakes by snatching a troubled seven-year-old foster child named Dougie, who's one of Rainie's cases. The cat-and-mouse intensifies, as does the mystery of the kidnapper's identity. Sympathetic characters, a strong sense of place and terrific plotting distinguish Gardner's new thriller.

Starred review from February 1, 2006
Gardner (Alone) scores another big hit with this sizzling police procedural and psychological thriller featuring ex-cop Rainie Conner and her husband, former FBI profiler Pierce Quincy. The couple has recently become estranged owing to Rainie's drinking, so Pierce is unaware that his wife has gone missing until the state cops call him in the dead of nightRainie's car has been found abandoned, the engine still running, on a lonely country road. When the kidnapper's first note appears (signed by a long-dead serial killer), Pierce's FBI experience tells him that this case is not about the $10,000 ransom, but something personal. After a troubled child connected to Rainie is also snatched, the game turns even more sinister. A sadistic captor, a desperate husband, and an extremely clever plot make this a classic all-night page-turner. Gardner is becoming a crime thriller standard in the tradition of Sandra Brown and Sue Grafton. Highly recommended for all thriller collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/05.]Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2005
At the center of this mix of police procedural and psychological thriller is Lorraine "Rainie" Conner, an ex-cop with a drinking problem whose car is found abandoned on a country road in Oregon on a particularly rainy November night. Leading the missing-person search is Carlton Kincaid, a no-nonsense state cop who'd rather be home with his wife and infant son. The search team calls in Pierce Quincy not because he's a former FBI profiler but because Rainie is his estranged wife, their marriage having come to a halt when her drinking resumed after 15 years of sobriety. Next on the scene is Quincy's daughter, Kimberly, who--you guessed it--is an FBI agent (or "feebie") working out of the Atlanta office. All these great minds converge to try to solve the mysterious disappearance of Rainie. Could she have been so depressed over her failed sobriety and marriage that she turned a standard-issue Glock on herself? As friendships build and mysteries unfold, Gardner keeps the suspense cranked high. Recommend this to fans of Lee Child.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

March 6, 2006
Former FBI profiler Pierce Quincy's marriage is on the rocks, but things go from bad to worse when his wife, Rainie, goes missing. A kidnapper soon contacts Quincy with a somewhat unusual ransom demand, leaving Quincy and the investigation team with no choice but to play the kidnapper's game to keep Rainie alive. The story is told from alternating points of view, showing Quincy's efforts to find his wife and Rainie's struggle against her cruel captor. The plot is formulaic and derivative, but the abridgment makes it simple to follow, so listeners should have no trouble keeping up. Kairos's voice is light and pleasant, and while her narration is not superb, it does get the job done. Kairos modulates her voice sufficiently to distinguish between male and female voices, but the accents she attempts are beyond her and come off sounding a bit silly. For the most part, the narration is engaging and effectively propels the story forward, but Kairos—and Gardner—occasionally lays it all on a bit too thick, taking the narrative (and the narration) into the realm of tepid melodrama. Simultaneous release with the Bantam hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 21).