Mo Hayder - Gone

 

Review by Brian Lowen read live on bookshow 9th May 2013

This is a book in the series featuring Detective Jack Caffery and it appears that a female Sergeant who works in the specialist team involved in underwater searching and goes by the strange name of Flea also features in this series.

Jack and Flea were emotionally involved with each other until a terrible night when Flea’s brother was a hit and run drunk driver and Flea hid the girl’s body that he had killed. Jack got to hear of this but thought it was Flea who had run the girl over and this finished their relationship, but strangely, the killing was never reported.

The story involves the search for a man who has abducted several young girls. It is thought that he has taken them for his own sexual gratification but it turns out to be for a completely different reason which is revealed later in the story.

I still cannot really make up my mind whether I enjoyed this book or not. It is good during the action sections but there are a lot of dream sequences that I found unnecessary to the story.  It is quite a long book and doesn’t need this padding.

The action section in this last few chapters are excellent – gripping and exciting but the ending is another dream that leaves you hanging in mid air – to ensure you buy the next book in the series, I suppose.  Other authors have done this and I usually don’t mind because I want to buy the next book, but I am not so sure with this one.  Not a good page turner and rather a lot of confusing names. Perhaps I wasn’t concentrating enough!

Not for me, but I guess a lot of people will enjoy it.