In Lisa Gardner's third thriller featuring feisty Boston police detective D.D. Warren (after 2005's Alone and 2007's Hide), The Neighbor

focuses on an attractive young wife and mother who inexplicably disappears from her suburban home. Sandra Jones was a sixth-grade social studies teacher at a local middle school, a well-liked employee, the doting mother to a precocious four-year-old daughter, and a seemingly devoted wife to her handsome husband, a reporter at the Boston Daily. So why would she abandon her daughter in the middle of the night and leave without taking any money, identification or

clothing?

When Warren is called in to investigate the bizarre disappearance, she finds the husband—who should be overwrought—eerily detached and uncooperative. "His eyes were empty, like staring into pools of starless night," she notes. To complicate matters, Warren soon has several persons of interest: Aidan Brewster, an oversexed neighbor who happens to be a convicted sex offender; Ethan Hastings, an eighth-grade computer nerd who was helping Mrs. Jones with a teaching module about the Internet and apparently has a crush on her; and Wayne Reynolds, Ethan's uncle and a certified forensic computer examiner who may or may not be romantically linked to the comely teacher.

Both Sandra Jones and her husband have histories that are shadowy at best. As Warren methodically unearths more and more information about the enigmatic couple's past, she begins to realize that outward appearances can be deceiving—and that unspeakable evil can lurk inside anyone.

Powered by a cast of realistically portrayed—and deeply flawed—characters as well as a virtual closet full of nightmarish plot twists, Gardner's latest is a pulse-pounding page-turner of the highest order. Fans of emotionally super-charged thrillers should be forewarned, however, to make sure all the doors are securely locked before reading. Or better yet, bring this one to the beach—and start reading well before sunset.

Copyright 2009 BookPage Reviews.

Gardner's (Say Goodbye) new suspense novel intertwines several "ripped from the headline" themes. Sandra Jones is a pretty, blonde, 23-year-old schoolteacher who's gone missing. Her husband, Jason, claims to have returned home late at night to find their four-year-old daughter asleep in her bed and his wife nowhere to be found. When Boston detective sergeant D.D. Warren arrives on the scene, she finds a house that is almost a fortress and a husband who seems to be more concerned with protecting his secrets than with finding his wife. As the case explodes in the press, the police race against time. Was Jason responsible for Sandra's disappearance? Or was it the convicted sex offender down the street? Or someone else altogether? VERDICT Gardner's compelling narrative keeps her readers guessing, and her latest is sure to appeal to fans of Linwood Barclay's domestic thrillers. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/09.]—Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

In bestseller Gardner's gripping 11th thriller, Sgt. Det. D.D. Warren, last seen in 2007's Hide, looks into the curious disappearance of Sandra Jones, a sixth-grade social studies teacher, from her South Boston home: Sandra's keys and purse were on the kitchen counter, nothing was disturbed, and her four-year-old daughter, Ree, to whom she was devoted, was asleep upstairs. The missing woman's reporter husband, Jason, becomes an immediate suspect because he refuses to answer questions and appears to have destroyed evidence. As a media frenzy envelopes the case, Warren's investigation reveals the couple's life as anything but perfect or normal. Full of inventive twists, this highly entertaining novel delivers a shocking solution as well as a perfectly realized sense of justice. Fans will appreciate the deft way Gardner weaves in a key character from 2008's Say Goodbye. (June)