Gone (Hardcover)

by Lisa Gardner (Author)
Key Phrases: latent prints, good news department, ransom drop, Lisa Gardner, Peggy Ann, Sheriff Atkins (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
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. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; BCE edition (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553804316
• ISBN-13: 978-0553804317
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #238,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My first Gardner thriller, Gone is great!, July 3, 2006

By	Bill Garrison (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars DO NOT PURCHASE THE AUDIO CD!, May 1, 2006

By	J. D. Minium "The bookster" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Gone (Gardner, Lisa (Spoken Word)) (Audio CD)

It's not often that I take the time to write a review, but I wanted to save other customers from the inconvenience I experienced. DO NOT PURCHASE THE AUDIO CD!

I wish I could speak on the quality of the story Ms. Gardner wrote, but I decided to listen to it instead of read it. (it simply a matter of available time) It starts out really nice. However, when Disk 1 finished, and I reached for Disk 2 I found another copy of Disk 1... no Disk 2.

I returned it to the store hoping that only my copy was screwed up, but alas all six copies on the shelf had two copies of Disk 1 and no Disk 2.

Ms. Gardner should take this up with her publisher. (or consider a change) How hard is it to count to 2? A bit of Quality Control would have been nice. I would also suggest Amazon take the CD off the shelves as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slow, February 28, 2006

By	C. Guillory "xkm" (Shreveport, LA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.