The Neighbor

Three narrators are a big plus for Gardner's latest mystery, set in Boston. Sandy, a young wife and mother, disappears in the middle of the night. Suspicion falls on her husband and on a nearby recovering sexual offender. Some of the text is first person (Kirby Heyborne is terrific as the tormented offender), and some is third person, but it all hangs together, and the suspense builds effectively. Other characters--all well delineated--include policewoman D.D. Warren, husband Jonas, precocious daughter Ree, Sandy's estranged Southern father, and Sandy herself, vulnerable but determined. There are tender moments, suspenseful passages, and scenes of brutality, all well presented without a hint of what comes next. A can't-put-it-down plot and performance! J.B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

April 20, 2009
In bestseller Gardner's gripping 11th thriller, Sgt. Det. D.D. Warren, last seen in 2007's Hide
, looks into the curious disappearance of Sandra Jones, a sixth-grade social studies teacher, from her South Boston home: Sandra's keys and purse were on the kitchen counter, nothing was disturbed, and her four-year-old daughter, Ree, to whom she was devoted, was asleep upstairs. The missing woman's reporter husband, Jason, becomes an immediate suspect because he refuses to answer questions and appears to have destroyed evidence. As a media frenzy envelopes the case, Warren's investigation reveals the couple's life as anything but perfect or normal. Full of inventive twists, this highly entertaining novel delivers a shocking solution as well as a perfectly realized sense of justice. Fans will appreciate the deft way Gardner weaves in a key character from 2008's Say Goodbye
.