Before she disappeared : a novel

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Title:

Before she disappeared : a novel

Author:

Gardner, Lisa, author.

ISBN:

9781524745042

9781524745073

Personal Author:

Gardner, Lisa, author.

Physical Description:

383 pages ; 24 cm

Series:

Frankie Elkin ; 1

Frankie Elkins ; 1.

General Note:

Source of cataloging data: WCP

Abstract:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner, a propulsive thriller that introduces Frankie Elkin - an ordinary woman who will stop at nothing to find the missing people the rest of the world has given up on. A recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings, Frankie Elkin has devoted her life to doing what no one else will - searching for the lost and forgotten. When the police have moved on, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking. A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own - and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will risk it all to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her. -- From dust jacket.

Subject Term:

Missing persons -- Fiction.

Cold cases (Criminal investigation) -- Fiction.

Alcoholics -- Fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Sugar Grove - Todd Library	Paperback Book	PS3557 .A7132 B44 2021	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner, a propulsive thriller featuring an ordinary woman who will stop at nothing to find the missing people that the rest of the world has forgotten

Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will--searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking.

A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own--and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Recovering alcoholic Frankie Elkin, the narrator of this outstanding crime novel from bestseller Gardner (When You See Me), has found purpose, if not peace, in channeling her addictive personality into finding missing women no one else bothers to search for. Newly arrived in Boston, Frankie sets out on the trail of 16-year-old Angelique Lovelie Badeau, who seems destined to beat the odds in her tough Haitian community. What would drive Angelique, a girl with such a bright future, to simply disappear one day? Frankie's search leads her through a thicket of gangs, traffickers, and institutional racism. The mystery's solution is a neat twist on the obvious dangers that might destroy a talented girl's dreams. Frankie, who describes herself as an "average middle-aged white woman," is a nuanced character whose unflinching honesty and lack of self-pity allows the reader to empathize, if not completely sympathize, with her struggles. And cat lovers are sure to fall for Piper, Frankie's equally dysfunctional feral companion. Gardner pulls no punches in this socially conscious standalone. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)

Kirkus Review

Gardner introduces Frankie Elkin, a tough, street-smart survivor who has found her calling searching for missing persons. Frankie is an alcoholic who considers herself responsible for the death of the man she loved. As penance, she travels around the country, volunteering to locate missing people for whom there may be no new leads. She knows that not everyone believes in her gifts or trusts her motives, but she cannot back down from the opportunity to find answers for these grieving families. When she comes to Boston to investigate the disappearance of Angelique Badeau, she takes a cheap apartment and a bartending job at a scruffy neighborhood bar, sticking out like a sore thumb but determined to make headway in a case that has baffled the police. Teenagers go missing and teenagers run away, but not Angelique. She and her brother survived the earthquake in Haiti to live with their aunt in America, taking advantage of opportunities to work hard and get a good education. Frankie discovers that Angelique is not the only teenage girl to have disappeared in the neighborhood; a few months after her, another girl went missing. This girl's family, torn apart by gang violence and poverty, may have been reason enough to run away, but Frankie has been around the block enough to know: There are no coincidences. Then Angelique passes a message to her brother: proof of life, but no hint as to where she's being held. With the help of a ruggedly handsome detective, Frankie digs relentlessly into the case--until people start dying. Now in a race against time, she must discover why these girls have been kidnapped--and why they might be running out of time. Gardner is a pro at writing tough-as-nails, wiseass, broken-yet-steely female characters, and Frankie does not disappoint. Plus, it's a pretty solid mystery. Fans of Gardner's Tessa Leoni, D.D. Warren, and Flora Dane will embrace her new heroine's grit and empathy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Vagabond investigator Frankie Elkin (think Reacher with the gift of gab over guns) lands in Boston's rough-edged Mattapan neighborhood on a mission to find Angelique Badeau, a teenager who disappeared 11 months earlier. In a blink, Frankie has secured a bartending job at the neighborhood drinking hole, found an AA meeting, and pissed off the cops investigating Angelique's disappearance. (They're not buying her investigation as public service, and she's not enlightening them about her need for redemption.) Frankie is sure that Angelique isn't a runaway: she's too close to her Aunt Guerline and her brother, Emmanuel. So Frankie pokes the soft spots in Angelique's inner circle and finds that Angelique grew secretive after participating in a rec-center program where she befriended Livia Samdi, another missing Mattapan teen, whose gangland connections up the stakes. When Emmanuel reports that Angelique has left him a coded plea for help online, Frankie's baggage-laden obsession pushes her straight into Mattapan's underworld. It's hard to tag just one stand-out element here, between the multidimensional portrayal of Mattapan's Haitian expat community, Frankie's humanizing demons and straightforward investigative technique, and a page-turning plot with all its ends tucked in unpredictably tight. Tense and immersive, Gardner's latest (hopefully a series starter) is a sure bet both for readers drawn to gritty gumshoe fiction and for the growing legion of true-crime podcast fans.

Library Journal Review

The No. 1 New York Times best-selling Gardner offers her first stand-alone in some time with this story of Frankie Elkin, a middle-aged recovering alcoholic whose job is to find people after everyone else has given up. Here she's in a scruffy Boston neighborhood searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months ago, and a distinct lack of support from those around her signals that's she's on the right track.

Excerpts

Chapter 1 The water feels like a cold caress against my face. I kick deeper down into the gloom, my long hair trailing behind me like a dark eel. I'm wearing clothes. Jeans, tennis shoes, a t-shirt topped with an open windbreaker that wings out and slows my descent. My clothing grows heavier and heavier till I can barely flutter my legs, work my arms. Why am I in clothes? Wet suit. Oxygen tanks. Thoughts drift through my mind but I can't quite grab them. I must reach the bottom of the lake. Where the sunlight no longer penetrates and sinuous creatures lurk. I must find... I must do... My lungs are now as heavy as my legs. A feeling of pressure builds in my chest. An old Chevy truck. Dented, battered, with a cab roof sun-bleached the color of a barely lit sky. This image appears in my mind and I seize it tightly. That's why I'm here, that's what I'm looking for. A sliver of silver in the lake's muck. I started with sonar. Another random thought, but as I sink lower in the watery abyss, I can picture that, too. Me, piloting a small boat that I'd rented with my own money. Conducting long sweeps across the lake for two days straight, which was all I could afford, working a theory everyone else had dismissed. Until... Where is my wet suit? My oxygen tank? Something's wrong. I need... I must... I can't hold the thought. My lungs are burning. I feel them collapsing in my chest and the desire to inhale is overwhelming. A single gasp of dark, cloudy water. No longer fighting the lake, but becoming one with it. Then I won't have to swim anymore. I will plummet to the bottom, and if my theory is right, I will join my target as yet another lost soul never to be seen again. Old truck. Cab roof sun-bleached the color of a barely lit sky. Remember. Focus. Find it. Is that a glimpse of silver I see over there, partially hidden by a dense wall of waving grasses? I try to head in that direction but get tangled in my flapping windbreaker. I pause, treading my legs frantically while trying to free my arms from my jacket's clinging grip. Chest, constricting tighter. Didn't I have an oxygen tank? Wasn't I wearing a wet suit? Something is so very wrong. I need to hold the thought, but the lake is winning and my chest hurts and my limbs have grown tired. The water is soft against my cheek. It calls to me, and I feel myself answer. My legs slow. My arms drift up. I succumb to the weight of my clothes, the lead in my chest. I start to sink faster. Down, down, down. I close my eyes and let go. Paul always said I fought too much. I made things too hard. Even his love for me. But of course, I didn't listen. Now, a curious warmth fills my veins. The lake isn't dark and gloomy after all. It's a sanctuary, embracing me like a lover and promising to never let go. Then... Not a spot of silver. Not the roof of an old, battered truck that was already a hundred thousand miles beyond its best days. Instead, I spy a gouge of black appearing, then disappearing amid a field of murky green. I wait for the lake grasses to ripple left, then I see it again, a dark stripe, then another, and another. Four identical shapes resting at the bottom of the lake. Tires. I'm looking at four tires. If I wasn't so damn tired, I'd giggle hysterically. The sonar had told the truth. It had sent back a grainy image of an object of approximately the right size and shape resting at the bottom of the deep lake. It just hadn't occurred to me that the said object might be upside down. Pushing through my lethargy now, urgency sparking one last surge of determination. They'd told me I was wrong. They'd scoffed, the locals coming out to watch with rolling eyes as I'd awkwardly unloaded a boat I had no idea how to captain. They called me crazy to my face, probably muttered worse behind my back. But now... Move. Find. Swim. Before the lake wins the battle. Wet suit. The words flutter through the back of my mind. Oxygen tank. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But in my befuddled state, I can't make it right. I push myself forward, fighting the water, fighting oxygen deprivation. They're right: I am crazy. And wild and stubborn and reckless. But I'm not broken. At least, not yet. I reach the first tire. Grab onto the slimy rubber to get my bearings. Quick now, not much time left. Rear tire. I crab my way along the algae-covered frame till I finally reach the front cab. Then I simply stare. Lani Whitehorse. Twenty-two years old. Waitress, daughter, mother of a three-year old. A woman with an already long history of bad taste in men. She'd disappeared eighteen months ago. Runaway, the locals decided. Never, her mother declared. And now she was found, trapped at the bottom of the lake that loomed next to the hairpin turn she drove each night after the end of her 2 a.m. bartending shift. Just as I had theorized while pouring over months of interviews, maps, and extremely thin police reports. Had Lani misjudged the corner she'd driven so many times before? Startled at a crossing deer? Or simply nodded off at the wheel, exhausted by a life that took too much out of her? I can't answer all the questions. But I can give her mother, her daughter, this. Lani dangles upside down, her face lost inside the floating halo of her jet-black hair, her body still belted into the cab she'd climbed into eighteen months ago. My lungs are no longer burning. My clothes are no longer heavy. I feel only reverence as I curl my fingers around the door handle and pull. The door opens easily. Except...doors can't open under water. Wet suit. Oxygen tank. What is wrong, what is wrong... My brain belatedly sounds the alarm: danger! Think, think, think! Except I can't, I can't, I can't. I am inhaling now. Breathing in the lake. Welcoming it inside my lungs. I have become one with it, or it has become one with me. As Lani Whitehorse turns her head. She stares at me with her empty eye sockets, gaping mouth, gleaming white skull. "Too late," she tells me. "Too late." Then her bony arm thrusts out, snatches my wrist. I kick, try to pull back. But I've lost my grip on the door handle. I have no leverage. My air is gone and I'm nothing but lake water and weedy grasses. She pulls me into the truck cab with unbelievable strength. One last scream. I watch it emerge as an air bubble that floats up, up, up. All that is left of me. Lani Whitehorse slams the door shut. And I join her forever in the gloom. Rumble. Screech. A sudden booming announcement: "South Station, next stop!" I jerk awake as the train lurches to a halt, blinking my eyes and looking down at my perfectly dry clothes. A dream. Nightmare. Something. Not the first nor the last in my line of work. It leaves me with a film of dread as I grab my single bag and belatedly follow the rest of the passengers off the train. Excerpted from Before She Disappeared: A Novel by Lisa Gardner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.