Gone [Hardcover]

Mo Hayder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2011

Praised as a “maestro of the sinister” by the New York Daily News, Mo Hayder delivers her most suspenseful novel to date. By turns thrilling and horrifying, Gone follows the investigation of a brilliant and twisted carjacker with a disturbing game to play.

Jack Caffery’s newest case seems like a routine carjacking, a crime he’s seen plenty of times before. But as the hours tick by and his investigation morphs into a nightmare, he realizes the sickening truth: the thief wasn’t after the car, but the eleven-year-old girl in the backseat. Meanwhile police diver Sergeant Flea Marley is pursuing her own theory of the case, and what she finds in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel could put her in grave danger. The carjacker is always a step ahead of the Major Crime Investigation Unit, toying with their minds in taunting letters and ready to strike again. As the chances for his victims grow slimmer, Jack and Flea race to fit the pieces together in time.

Gone is Mo Hayder at her terrifying best. Each dark and captivating twist reveals a new dimension to this tight-knight plot, burrowing deeper into the chilling and clever world Mo Hayder creates.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A carjacking goes from bad to horrifying in Hayder's gripping fifth thriller featuring Bristol Det. Insp. Jack Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe "Flea" Marley (after Skin). When Rose Bradley's car is stolen with her 11-year-old daughter, Martha, inside, it appears to be a routine snatch-and-grab. It becomes clear, however, that the carjacker had his sights set on the girl, not the vehicle, when he begins taunting the police, who scramble to find clues to Martha's whereabouts. Jack soon discovers a pattern of similar kidnappings disguised as car thefts, with the level of violence ratcheted up in each case. As Jack tracks the kidnapper above ground, Flea's search takes her below ground and underwater into a decommissioned canal and tunnel, where she fights to save her own life and that of the kidnapped child. Hayder expertly brings to life the claustrophobia of Flea's dives and the emotional burden of the case on Jack. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In the fifth riveting entry in the series featuring haunted homicide detective Jack Caffery, his latest case seems to be a routine carjacking. But as the investigation proceeds, it becomes clear that the Jacker was really after the 11-year-old girl in the backseat and, what’s more, is taunting police with the threat that he will strike again. He is so far ahead of the unit at every step that the investigation is continually being stymied, and Jack suspects the Jacker is privy to inside information. As the Walking Man, a vagrant with whom Jack has a special connection, tells him, the kidnapper “is cleverer than any of the others you’ve brought to me.” Meanwhile, police diver Flea Marley is recklessly ignoring protocol in her search for the missing girl and finds herself trapped in an underwater cavern. Hayder keeps the tension high as she switches between the distraught parents and the stressed-out investigators. The meticulously crafted plot is heightened by Hayder’s skillful evocation of mood as she summons the specter of a highly intelligent criminal who is taking great satisfaction from every parent’s worst nightmare. A captivating thriller. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hayder has been threatening to vault from cult favorite to mainstream smash for a few books now, and this one—aided by a full-dress marketing campaign—may be the one to make the jump. --Joanne Wilkinson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (February 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802119646
• ISBN-13: 978-0802119643
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than the series April 12, 2011

By Mick McAllister

Format:Hardcover

Gone continues a story that spans, now, three novels, and it's much better than the other two (and, fortunately, you don't need them to read it).

Ritual and Skin, along with Pig Island, demonstrate that Mo Hayder is not a very consistent writer. It's hard to believe that the author of Birdman and The Devil of Nanking could have written a book as bad as Pig Island, but there it is. When Hayder is too fixated on what Stephen King calls "the gross out" (and identifies as the last resort of a good horror writer) to devote attention to consistency and coherence, her books are tiresome and embarrassing.

However, when she is good, she is very, very good. Gone comes closer to good than gross-out. Although it proceeds directly from the last page of Ritual, you don't need to know how Flea Marley ended up with something very unfortunate in her trunk, and Jack Caffrey's apparently permanent miseries do not require entire novels of backstory. Their pursuit of a kidnapper of little girls is a page-turner, and the criminal is about as revolting as most of us can imagine (except for an odd twist at the end). Flea's adventure in the tunnel seems to take up half the book, and the pages turn quickly.

I have quibbles -- It's a bit of cheat (you'll see what I mean) that we don't learn the mechanices of how someone gets impaled on a spike, and there is a bit of Hayder's trademark piling on in what happens to Flea (if you think YOU had a bad day...). As with so many of Hayder's books, the weakest link is the conclusion. She is brilliant at getting into fixes, but vague about getting out again.

I read all this, and I wonder why I bothered to give the book four stars. In part because my expectations were so low, after the disappointments of Skin and Ritual and the simple revulsion over Pig Island (there are very few books I wish I had not read; Pig Island tops the list). In part because Hayder is peddling a mixture of pace and theme at appeals to me, when she is on her game. And here, she is.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to her usual standard October 31, 2010

By Rod Govers

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a big fan of Mo Hayder and couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. I broke my rule on the maximum I would pay for an ebook prices and handed over the $14.51 for it. Now I wish I had waited. It was just an average police procedural and certainly a let down after her previous books. What happened to her use of the macabre which was the main feature of previous books?

There was no real tension in the book as it was easy to see the twist early on. The Flea Marley character was annoying and well past her use-by date.

I hope Hayder's next book is better. I would hate to think she's already reached the peak of her writing career.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A tense thriller that will surprise you to the very end February 23, 2011

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

Mo Hayder is arguably better known as an author of top-shelf mysteries in her native Great Britain than in the United States. I predict this is about to change. GONE, her latest novel published in America, is one of those books that dares you to put it down once you've started reading and then challenges you to forget it once you have finished.

GONE begins six months after the events of SKIN and is considered to be the third in the Walking Man series. British PI Jack Caffrey and police diver Phoebe "Flea" Marley are prominently featured, with both parties concealing different viewpoints of the same secret, to the detriment of what had been the beginnings of a relationship. Hayder does a wonderful job of bringing new readers up to date while refreshing the memories of those familiar with the series. He pulls this off without missing a step in advancing the story, which is terrifying from the start. The source of the terror is a masked criminal who carjacks a vehicle with an 11-year-old girl in the back seat. At first the kidnapping is thought to be accidental, but then Marley manages to connect the latest incident to two previous cases with startling similarities. Another child is soon abducted during another carjacking, yet is returned shortly thereafter.

When the incidents turn even more bizarre, Caffrey and his team are at a loss. Someone is making a fool of the police inspectors, while young, innocent lives hang in the balance. You've heard of a plot device called "the ticking clock"; GONE feels as if it has a houseful of them, all ready to chime the fateful hour in seconds, as Caffrey and his team are all too well aware that from a statistical standpoint their odds of finding a kidnap victim alive diminish dramatically after 24 hours. Then, at the height of the investigation, Marley goes missing after following up a lead on her own. Caffrey turns to the enigmatic Walking Man --- a person horribly disturbed by tragedy, brilliant by nature and homeless by choice --- and learns more than he asks for, even as lives hang in the balance. And Hayder isn't content to make this an edge-of-the-seat mystery. Everyone who walks through the pages of GONE is at least a little bit whacked --- from the police investigators to the victimized parents, the doctors on the scene, and, most of all, Caffrey and Marley, each in their own ways.

The only way you can read GONE without having every nerve in your body jumping and screaming is if you are not paying attention. I will tell you from experience that if you have children in your home, you will be sorely tempted to sleep in front of their bedroom doors at night, like the Orwellian guardians who stand ready to defend those who would harm the innocent. Hayder is a storyteller par excellence, the compendium of the camp counselors who scared the living stuffing out of their charges around the campfire while strange and frightening noises issued from the dark. Even if you think you've figured things out after the first third of the book, you haven't figured it all out. And Hayder, bless her, continues to drop charges into the water until practically the last paragraph.

If you have read her previous works, you know what I'm talking about. If you're new to her craftsmanship, read GONE and be enthralled. Strongly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub