The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner

The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner
Buy The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Kerry King
Summary: A pretty, young, blonde primary school teacher disappears from the South Boston area, apparently without a trace and leaving behind her little girl - who happens to be the only witness - and her husband and prime suspect, the handsome and secretive Jason Jones. At face value, Sandy and Jason Jones seemed like the perfect married couple. But if life was so perfect, why isn't Jason trying to find his wife?
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 384	Date: July 2009
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 978-1409101024
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Jason Jones returns from his late shift at the newspaper to find his four-year-old daughter, Ree, sleeping soundly and his wife nowhere to be seen. Sandy has not taken her bag, money or her mobile phone and she has not taken her car. More importantly she has not taken Ree. And Sandy would never leave Ree.

Detective D D Jackson does not like Jason Jones one little bit. She cannot comprehend his closed down, composed manner. This is not the normal reaction of a man whose wife seems to have been abducted from inside her own home. A home with steel reinforced doors and impenetrable window locks. In fact, the more Detective Jackson talks to Jason, the more he is starting to fit the profile as a suspect in his own wife's disappearance.

Working against the clock and with a media hurricane whipping around her heels, Detective Jackson knows that in the case of a missing person, she has a matter of hours to discover whether Jason Jones is the perfect husband or the perfect murderer. The closer Jackson gets, the more Jones attempts to isolate himself and his daughter from the centre of the storm. But the harder he pushes away, the more guilty he makes himself look. A man with no apparent past; a family from nowhere - it is almost as if the Jones family landed in South Boston like Dorothy's house in Oz - and Jackson's intuition is on red alert.

What Detective Jackson has to resolve in her own mind, first before she can build her case, is whether Jason is trying to hide his guilt or if he is simply trying to hide.

Lisa Gardner has been writing bestselling crime thriller fiction (as Lisa Gardner) for about a decade now. Prior to that, Gardner wrote Romance novels under the pen name of Alicia Scott and if you have ever read any of Gardner's work, I can assure you it's quite a departure from hearts and flowers!

This is my third or fourth helping of Gardner's work and even now, I am still hungry for more. The Neighbour was everything that I thought it was going to be and then somehow, it managed to deliver even more. With dexterous historical notes from the mind of Sandy Jones, interspersed precisely in the right places and always where required to unify the story, I would even go as far as to say that I had trouble putting it down, and had to fight the temptation, many times, to flick to the back page to put my mind at rest. Lisa Gardner writes stories that build a head of steam at quite a lick. Her characters are multi-faceted and completely compelling and the journey she will take you on, through the maze of her mind, is fraught with danger, plot twists, landslides and bombshells and, joyfully, I found The Neighbour to be no different.

If you are anything like me and tend toward sussing the outcome of a thriller about 100 pages before the end (sometimes less but usually more), The Neighbour will keep you guessing right up until the final page (actually on the final page) and for a die-hard reader of the genre, it just doesn't get any better than that.

If high octane thrillers are your literary neck of the woods, The Neighbour is definitely for you. You may also enjoy The Next Accident, also by Lisa Gardner and almost certainly Karin Slaughter's novels will appeal; Bookbag have reviewed Skin Privilege and perhaps it will tickle your fancy. Otherwise, if the whole 'vanishing' angle is of interest, you should probably take a look at No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay, which we thought was excellent.

Lastly, our thanks to the boys and girls at Orion for sending this copy to Bookbag for review.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner at Amazon.com.

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