Right Behind You (Quincy and Rainie #7) by Lisa Gardner

Right Behind You (Quincy and Rainie #7).  Lisa Gardner. Penguin Publishing Group. October 2017. 480 pp.  ISBN#: 9781101984376.

Telly Ray Nash and his sister Sharlah have been brutalized by their father for years.  One night Telly has had enough and takes a baseball bat to his father, killing him and even using the bat on his sister Sharlah.  The siblings are then separated and are trying to put their lives together with families who actually want to adopt them.  One day, however, Telly kills both of his foster parents and wanders off to commit more murder.  Sharlah learns about this from her own foster parents, Quincy and Rainie, who are worried sick that her brother will come after to finish off what he began several years earlier. Quincy and Rainie are former FBI profilers and so they know something of what can be predicted.

The novel then concerns the search for Telly who is on the run.  The author takes the reader into the mind of Telly and Sharlah as the search continues.  The two victims haven’t really pieced together why their violent background unfolded.  Sharlah can’t figure out why her brother turned the bat on her after he finished his rampage on his abusive father.  Both deeply know fear, hate, and love, experiences that don’t make sense, as well as the care their foster parents are unconditionally offering them.  It’s just such a chaotic mental and emotional mess in their minds!

Don’t quit reading because the story enfolds in ways that are imagined by the reader.  Resist the temptation to stereotypically categorize Telly as a wounded killer gone berserk.  There’s far more to this story worth the telling.  Lisa Gardner is a wonderful storyteller who knows how to pace action and tension that keeps the reader riveted to the plot and caring about the characters involved in this nightmarish search and its aftermath.  Well-plotted with multiple characters worth rooting for to come out of their nightmarish experience!

Find Her (Detective D. D. Warren #8) by Lisa Gardner

Find Her (Detective D. D. Warren #8).  Lisa Gardner. Penguin Publishing Group. October 2016. 416 pp.  ISBN#: 9780525954576.

Harrowing! That will be the outstanding descriptive word that remains in the reader’s mind long after reading this ordeal that lasted 492 days for one kidnapped woman!  The story begins from the narrative voice of an unnamed person who is locked in a coffin, who struggles to find a point of escape, whose panic threatens an attack cutting off breath, and on…and on…and on. 

Pages later we learn the victim’s name is Flora.  She has survived!  Now the account switches back and forth between what precisely Flora endured and her passionate interest in other woman who have experienced similar situations.  In fact, her entire room is wallpapered with news accounts of kidnapping, rape and murdered woman. 

Flora’s family fear what she has become.  Even the one man she trusts, Samuel Keans who is a specialist in survivors of extensive abuse, is watching and listening carefully as he wonders if she has become a vigilante against all who commit these type of crimes or if there’s another secret agenda Flora is following.

Detective D. D. Warren is now investigating a case where a woman turns on her abuser and he succumbs after a gruesome attack. When the police arrive, the woman is more concerned about other victims and seems to know the psychological profile of both abuser and victim better than the detective does.  At the same time, she goes out to bars, drinks too much, and puts herself in a position where any unsavory character spots and targets her. 

Now Flora disappears and we learn her mission.  Given Flora’s scarred mental and emotional condition, which we have from her in-depth description of far too many of those days she was captive, we know something awful is about to happen.

In recent years, news media have covered stories of victims who were kidnapped and abused, but this is the first time we have access to a well-researched, factually connected account of what it’s like to be a victim in this situation.  So this is not only a horrific story but it’s even more engaging because we learn how connected to reality it really is.  It’s hard to imagine such monstrous events but Lisa Gardner does a superb job in depicting same in daily, torturing detail.  It’s a necessary tale that must be told!

Crash and Burn: A Novel by Lisa Gardner

Crash and Burn: A Novel. Lisa Gardner. Penguin Group USA.  February 2015. 400 pp. hardback and e-book. ISBN #:9780525954569.

“Where is Vero?” repeats Nicole Frank immediately after a devastatingly brutal car crash in which her SUV landed upright with the front of the car vertically dug in the dirt at the bottom of a deep hill off a main road.  Despite phenomenal injuries, she manages to crawl out of the back of the SUV and up the hill to look for her daughter and get help.  She then blacks out and doesn’t wake up until she’s in the hospital.  Her quiet husband, Thomas, is sitting next to her bed, looking as he’s been through a tornado.  Later Nicole hears him telling the doctor that this is her third concussion in the last year and that she was very sick even before the setback of this horrific accident.  For some reason, that statement makes Nicole furious!

The cause of her TBI or traumatic brain injury is never initially explained except to say she kept blacking out and falling.  Meanwhile, she keeps calling for Vero, so much so that the local police set up teams, including tracking canines, to find a girl who they estimate must be between nine and thirteen years old.  It’s a search that’s in the wrong place for the wrong reasons but no one realizes that until much, much later in the story. Some have doubts about Nicole who had been found reeking of very expensive whiskey, in spite of the fact that her blood alcohol level wasn’t in the criminal zone.  However, she is guilty of driving when she was medically advised not to do so and so may be charged with criminal charges related to DWI.

The story begins to spin faster and faster as a team composed of Sgt. Wyatt Foster and his girlfriend/patrol woman Tessa Leoni, begin to put the broken pieces together of this strange occurrence.  At first they suspect Nicole’s husband, Thomas, of perhaps abusing her but then other characters enter the picture, in the guise of supportive, loving care for Nicole.  The bottom line is someone wants Nicole dead but who and why?

Crash and Burn: A Novel is a great thriller and the reader will never in a million years be able to put the pieces together before Nicole, Thomas, Wyatt and Tessa.  It’s a psychological novel as well as we get to read about Nicole’s thoughts and feelings as her memories very, very slowly return, eventually one significant memory that holds the key to her obsession with “Vero.”  Traumatic brain injury, indeed, has more than one meaning and a potent one at that! Crash and Burn… is a story of passionate, unconditional love that can endure the worst that can happen.  That love teaches Wyatt and Tessa something deep about what really matters and how they can handle their future together.  Nicole and Tom as well must learn to trust again, despite having seen something so, so terrible it could scar her forever!  Grand job, Lisa Gardner – love your novels!!!!

Fear Nothing: Detective D. D. Warren Series #7 by Lisa Gardner

Fear Nothing: Detective D. D. Warren Series #7.  Lisa Gardner. Penguin Group (USA). January 2014. 400 pp. hbk. ISBN #: 9780525953081.

Detective D. D. Warren is called to work on a horrendous crime scene with a signature rose left at the scene but a killing technique that is a shocker!  Having to visualize such a scene is bad enough but soon D.D. returns to the scene where she herself is viciously attacked and shot off her gun three times.  Although she is physically recovering from the event, in excruciating pain beyond description, she pursues two directions.  One is fulfilling the orders of her superiors to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Adeline Glen; and the other is meeting with her peers to continue to solve the initial crime that has now occurred a second time.

Dr. Adeline has her own problems, the first being an inability to feel any physical pain whatsoever. While that might seem terrific, in reality it’s a huge risk because she has to monitor against infection or the breaking of any body parts several times a day.  Feeling is a protective device against any external or internal threat to the body.  What would it be like to be lacking such an essential part of one’s internal defense system? 

Add to Dr. Adeline’s dilemma the fact she has a psychopathic sister, Shana, who is serving a life prison sentence.  She’s the emotional opposite of her Adeline.  Shana seethes with unbridled hate against her sister.  Adeline has no idea why she committed vicious murders both outside and inside prison.  Their father, by the way, was the famous Harry Day, who killed woman and buried them under the floor boards of their home, that is until the day he was killed by another family member.

With all of this mayhem continuing and now connecting all of these characters and two other critical people, detectives and D. D. are attempting to discovery the identity of the Rose Killer.  Ironically, one begins to believe it may be one of our main characters who is doing the killing, logically thinking.  But logic is a liar over and over in this hair-raising tale.  One feels the tension building by leaps and bounds as the story continues and ends with several solutions that the reader is in no way prepared for – phenomenal!

Lisa Gardner writes a novel that is thriller, crime fiction, paranormal tale, and mystery that clearly marks her as a professional in her trade and one to follow avidly.  Stunning, mind-boggling, amazing novel, Ms. Gardner!