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2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available
From the bestselling author of Alone and The Killing Hour comes a thriller that goes from heartbreaking to heartstopping in the blink of an eye.…
When someone you love vanishes without a trace, how far would you go to get them back?
For ex-FBI profiler Pierce Quincy, it’s the beginning of his worst nightmare: a car abandoned on a desolate stretch of Oregon highway, engine running, purse on the driver’s seat. And his estranged wife, Rainie Conner, gone, leaving no clue to her fate.
Did one of the ghosts from Rainie’s troubled past finally catch up with her? Or could her disappearance be the result of one of the cases they’d been working– a particularly vicious double homicide or the possible abuse of a deeply disturbed child Rainie took too close to heart?  Together with his daughter, FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, Pierce is battling the local authorities, racing against time, and frantically searching for answers to all the questions he’s been afraid to ask.
One man knows what happened that night. Adopting the alias of a killer caught eighty years before, he has already contacted the press. His terms are clear: he wants money, he wants power, he wants celebrity. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, Rainie will be gone for good.
Sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, it’s still not enough.
As the clock winds down on a terrifying deadline, Pierce plunges headlong into the most desperate hunt of his life, into the shattering search for a killer, a lethal truth, and for the love of his life, who may forever be…gone.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 21, 2005
      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.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Kirsten Kairos's voice doesn't drop low enough to portray adult men well, but you won't notice in Gardner's latest murder mystery, which features a troubled boy and an equally troubled female cop. And even when portraying a man, Kairos polishes Gardner's text so well, you'd be foolish to read the book to yourself. When Gardner's story has the boy pop a big, hairy beetle into his mouth, Kairos makes listeners squirm even more. Futhermore, Kairos is believable when the plot isn't. While Gardner's seventh book paints some believable drama, for example, a portrayal of hypothermia in rising water, it disappoints with other illogical or banal moments. D.J.M. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 6, 2006
      Former FBI profiler Pierce Quincy's marriage is on the rocks, but things go from bad to worse when his wife, Rainie, goes missing. A kidnapper soon contacts Quincy with a somewhat unusual ransom demand, leaving Quincy and the investigation team with no choice but to play the kidnapper's game to keep Rainie alive. The story is told from alternating points of view, showing Quincy's efforts to find his wife and Rainie's struggle against her cruel captor. The plot is formulaic and derivative, but the abridgment makes it simple to follow, so listeners should have no trouble keeping up. Kairos's voice is light and pleasant, and while her narration is not superb, it does get the job done. Kairos modulates her voice sufficiently to distinguish between male and female voices, but the accents she attempts are beyond her and come off sounding a bit silly. For the most part, the narration is engaging and effectively propels the story forward, but Kairos—and Gardner—occasionally lays it all on a bit too thick, taking the narrative (and the narration) into the realm of tepid melodrama. Simultaneous release with the Bantam hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 21).

    • AudioFile Magazine
      An overly complicated novel featuring detective psychiatrist Alex Delaware and his cop buddy, Milo Sturgis, gets muddied in detail and an annoying performance by a usually talented narrator. A young couple fakes an abduction that turns to murder. The story jumps back and forth through time and introduces a plethora of confusing characters. Normally, the Delaware stories are riveting and John Rubinstein is a joy to hear, but not this time. He's fine doing Alex and Milo, but everyone else is a caricature. A Jewish woman sounds stereotyped; the halting speech of a retarded man is painful. The book itself cries out for an abridgment. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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