In case of you who've never heard of Lisa Gardner, She has written many Thriller's including ' The Survivors club' and ' The Next Accident'!
'Gone' by Lisa Gardner was released in February 2006 and can be found on Amazon for £5.

Plot

This story follows the chilling case of the aptly named 'Eco killer' because of the riddling message he keeps sending out to the police, "Clock ticking ... planet dying.... animals weeping... rivers screaming... can't you hear it? Heat kills ...."
The eco killer started off his killings back in the blazing Georgian summer of 2000. In each case two young women are taken, one of the bodies is left by the roadside with clues to help find the other victim, who he gives a sporting chance to survive by giving her a jug of water. Each time the police are too late and the other victim dies. When one victim survives the killer disappears and we fast forward 3 years to Virginia where the killings start again.

My opinion

I found this book definitely has a theme that everyone can relate to. Every person has the power to save themselves, but they must believe this in order to push themselves and succeed.

This theme can be clearly linked to Kimberley, a newly recruited FBI agent who not too long ago witnessed the murders of her mother and sister. When she joins the investigation after stumbling across a body at her training ground, she learns quickly that unless she too wants to become a victim, she must gather all of her strength and resources in order to catch the killer.

Lisa Gardner does an excellent job at making all of the characters seem so real and believable and this for me made the book a very enjoyable read.

To add a bit of light relief to this chiller, a pinch of romance was added between Kimberly and one of the agents who failed to solve the Georgia Murders. This was very well written in my opinion, beautifully done, with no graphic sex scenes that we tend to find in many books! I found Kimberly's character needed this romance in order to break down her defense and make her a better person!

The book wasn't a heavy read as I expected, as the chapters were broken up nicely and you keep being drawn back to the latest victim and her bid for survival.

Another thing I enjoyed about Gardner's style of writing was it's clarity, I found the story easy to take in and also the free flow of it meant that I never got confused as to what was going on.

One of the best bits of the book, be it simple, was the fact that headed up on each chapter is the current location of the action, as well as the time, and more importantly in this story the temperature.
This really brought home to me the added emergency of the next victim being discovered before she to met her end.
Having this embedded in my mind made the situation feel eerily all to real, and I was so in grossed in the book as if I could see it all vividly playing out in my mind, and I was desperate to keep on reading to learn the young women's fate each time.

The enjoyable thing about this story is, it really isn't obvious who the killer is and you are kept guessing right up until the very end. There is nothing worse for me when after a few chapters you know exactly who the killer is, and how the story is going to pan out.
To sum it up, I would highly recommend this book to fans of spine chilling thrillers, with enough twists and turns in the story to keep you interested right through to the end!
Having never read any of her previous books, the style and disturbing reality of this one has got me highly interested in purchasing the rest of her books.

Book Information

Hard back 324 pages
Retails for £2 at Amazon