27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
My first Gardner thriller, Gone is great!, July 3, 2006
This review is from: Gone (Hardcover)
Gone is the newest thriller by Lisa Gardner and the first book I have read by this author. The book feels fresh and alive and there is no need to have read previous books to enjoy this book. Rainnie Connor has problems. She had an abusive childhood and currently is haunted by past cases and has a drinking problem.
She disappears while on a latenight drive, and team is formed to find her. Leading the team is Quincy, her estranged husband. The novel cuts back and forth between scenes of the police trying to find suspects, Quincy reaching out to his FBI agent daughter to help him find his wife, and of Rainnie in the hands of the kidnapper.
The are plenty of twists and turns in this fast paced novel. Rainnie is haunted by a past case of a murdered girl and her mother. I don't know if that was from a previous Gardner novel, but just the brief description it got in this book haunted me.
Gone is an exciting kidnapping mystery. The excitement comes from the characters and their situations, not the plot's ultimate outcome.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Slow, February 28, 2006
This review is from: Gone (Hardcover)
I, like a few others reviewing this book, was disappointed. I have read most of Ms. Gardner's books and have enjoyed every one of them--greatly. They were "all up all night and miss work the next day" reads. Unfortuately, I found "Gone" to be much less exciting then her previous works. I found myself turning page after page to get to the meat of the story; and even after finding that meat at the end, I still found myself lacking. I acted like Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally" and turned to the end just to see how "Gone" ended. Maybe in her next book, Ms. Gardner will find the old spark. I certainly hope so, because I do plan on buying it.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MUCH MORE THAN A THRILLER, April 23, 2006
This review is from: Gone (Hardcover)
This is the first book written by Lisa Gardner that I have read, and I enjoyed it immensely. It involves a backstory from her previous novels, but the necessary information is integrated in a way that allows GONE to work well as a standalone story. While the plot alone would only rate three or four stars, the author's method of narrating the story combined with the detailed development of very interesting characters combined and the inclusion of several interesting philosophical aspects to raise my enjoyment to an unqualified five stars. In addition, the compressed time frame in which the action occurred made the tension palpable.
The story begins on Tuesday, 12:24 a.m. PST on a dark and rainy night in Bakersville, OR.; the reader is sharing the thoughts of Lorraine (Rainie) Conner as she awakens from an apparently recurring nightmare which elicits such dread that she has to stifle the "visceral scream" which is deep in her throat. (This is experienced through the author's use of italics, a very effective technique both for providing insight regarding and also connection with Rainie and her husband Pierce Quincy by letting us inside their minds.) The story is told in brief segments all of which are identified by the time of their occurrence and are usually in chronological order although the reader has to be alert for the occasional out of sequence segment in addition to the flashbacks which are interspersed.
The story next shifts to Sergeant Detective Carlton Kincaid, Major Crimes, Portland office of the Oregon State Police (OSP) being awakened by his wife when he receives an official phone call at 2:47 a.m. A vehicle has been reported abandoned in the heavy night rain with "the driver's side door open, engine still running, and purse sitting in the passenger's seat" with the windshield wipers beating and headlights beaming. (This is the image very effectively utilized on the dust jacket.) The reader almost immediately learns that Rainie has been kidnapped, although in the first instance of the misdirection frequently utilized throughout the novel Sgt. Kincaid briefly suspects the involvement of Quincy, who is a former FBI profiler who has recently left Rainie due to her actions related to the stress induced by a brutal murder on which they have been consulting.
Events move quickly when Quincy's daughter, FBI Special Agent Kimberly (who was saved by policewoman Rainie after Kimberly's mother and sister were murdered) gets a strange SOS phone call apparently from Rainie's cell phone and then the local newspaper (the Daily Sun) receives the first of several communications from the kidnapper. Soon the Sun's reporter, Adam Danicic, inserts himself into the action as an intermediary given the knowledgeable kidnapper's desire for publicity and his clever use of the names of several famous kidnappers as the signatures on his subsequent communications. Soon Kimberly and her boyfriend Mac (a member of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation) arrive by plane and join the task force of state and local police that is being assembled, many of whom will play very important roles as the drama unfolds (especially the local sheriff Shelly Atkins).
We then meet another individual whose involvement is perhaps crucial to the case, the deeply troubled and truly weird Dougie Jones, the foster child whose alleged abuse Rainie had been investigating during the month before her kidnapping. As the story unfolds, the author skillfully weaves together several threads involving not only the very clever kidnapper but the story of Dougie's tragic life and self destructive tendencies, his foster parents suspicious relationship, the interagency tensions of the various law enforcement jurisdictions, and most significantly the tensions in Rainie's and Quincy's lives which have led to their estrangement and her unacknowledged alcoholism. The narration skillfully shifts among the viewpoints of several of the major characters as the time lengthens that Rainie is GONE.
Meanwhile, the rapid passage of time (of which we are constantly reminded) against the backdrop of the tight timeline established by the kidnapper combines with the many false assumptions and consequent missteps of the police to rapidly escalate the tension. Furthermore, readers increasingly realize that the story will undoubtedly end badly for some of the individuals whose lives they have shared. The author's treatment of psychological stress, interpersonal relationships, troubled children, and substance abusers and the way she makes all these integral aspects of her storyline is very impressive and involves great insight. And her understanding of the destructive impact of alcoholism on everyone involved with the abuser and her understanding of the power of the transition that is only possible with the spoken words "My name is Rainie Conner, and I am an alcoholic" is both insightful and realistic (with the exception of the fact that for the maintenance of anonymity the trademark phrase always used as an addict's introduction during AA or NA meetings never includes a last name).
With a few exceptions, Ms. Gardner does an excellent job of both providing enough details to add realism and by the end of the story also manages to tie up almost all the loose ends, in contrast to many authors who rush to conclude their stories once the central character solves the mystery, captures the villains, and closes the case. The only element of the story which was completely unbelievable within the plot context was the running speed of the characters in several different circumstances (including the crucial ransom drop), feats which they could only have accomplished if they were world class athletes. As illustration, the first instance occurs very early in the book, when Kimberly rolls out of bed at 5 a.m., is out running by 5:10 a.m. (highly unlikely if she wants to get dressed, perform certain essential bodily functions and avoid injury) and then with no warmup completes her six mile run by 5:45 a.m., a pace sufficiently fast so she would medal in many local races. While unfortunate, this lack of knowledge regarding running was sufficiently minor that these errors in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the book.
GONE is a real page turner; I made the mistake of starting the book when I did not have time to read it continuously but instead had to spread my completion of the story over several days. A few times I found myself committing the atypical act of fast forwarding through the next few chapters when I was forced to put the book down in the middle of an especially tension filled sequence even though I knew that when I had time to continue my reading that I would have to return and carefully read those segments which I had skimmed in order to absorb all the details which made the novel so enjoyable for me. Thus, I suggest that you save it for a rainy weekend, a vacation with plenty of time to read, or a long plane or train trip and read it without interruption. Remember, if you skim the book for plot only or speed read, you may miss a lot of the details of the character development which made the story so enjoyable for me and were a significant element in the tension which the author succeeded in creating.
Tucker Andersen
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