122. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
Detective D.D. Warren, book 3

Pages: 373
Ages: 18+
Finished: Jul. 5 2009
First Published: Jun. 16 '09
Genre: mystery, thriller
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

I've always wondered what people felt in the final hours of their lives.

Reason for Reading: I enjoyed my first Lisa Gardner book, last year's Say Goodbye, so much I wanted to keep reading her. I received a review copy from Random House Canada.

Comments: Jason and Sandra Jones seem to have the perfect life. They've figured out the perfect way to raise their four-year-old daughter. Sandra works days and Jason works evenings, this way they can look after their child themselves. One night Jason comes home from work and finds his daughter sleeping safely in bed and his wife missing. The police start to investigate and find Jason's manner very odd, he's obviously hiding something or perhaps he's just hiding. He becomes their person of interest from the beginning but unlike most cases which start off with several suspects which are slowly dropped as evidence and alibis collect, this case starts with one suspect and slowly gathers more, such as the known sex offender five houses down the street and the middle school student genius who is obsessively in love with Sandra, and more until there are too many suspects to know who is telling the truth.

Absolutely riveting book! I enjoyed this even better than my previous read by the author. I can certainly say I'll be going back and reading Ms. Gardner's backlist. This book gave me everything I want in a suspenseful mystery, twists and turns in plot, interesting characters and mostly: I only sort of figured out "whodunit" and that wasn't until near the end. Really not much more to say without gushing. The only thing that bothered me was the main detective's name was "D.D." Now this is just me but I've never met a woman who went around being called by initials and the fact that dd stands for 'darling daughter' in internet speak had my mind calling her that every third or fourth time her name appeared, strange but true. Unlike Say Goodbye, this book is not gruesome, there is a little violence of course but nothing that you can't read and eat at the same time. This was a page-turner, read in a weekend because you just can't put it down book for me. Mystery/thriller fans are sure to love this and if you haven't read Lisa Gardner before The Neighbor is a great place to start.



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