Before She Disappeared – Lisa Gardner

My thanks to Rachel Kennedy of Arrow Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Random House. For inviting me to be part of the blog tour for Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner, its out now and available for all good retailers.

‘Starts with a bang and never lets up! An utterly absorbing story about troubled families and twisted fates.’ SHARI LAPENA

Frankie Elkin has dedicated her life to doing what no one else will: searching for missing people the world has forgotten.

When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking. She has found fourteen victims to date, but none yet alive. Traveling from city to city with more regrets than belongings, Frankie is drawn to a new case in Boston, and to a neighbourhood with a rough reputation.

Angelique Badeau, a local teenager and Haitian immigrant, vanished eleven months ago in the middle of the day from her high school. No scrap of surveillance footage, no cell phone tracking;
Angelique simply disappeared.

Despite resistance from the Boston PD and the victim’s wary family, Frankie starts to unpick the truth of Angelique’s disappearance and starts to discover there are those that don’t want these questions answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to find Angelique and bring her home, even if it means the next person to go missing will be herself …

Our Author – Lisa Gardner

At the tender age of twenty-seven, Lisa Gardner became an overnight success with the publication of her first thriller, The Perfect Husband. Launching to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, Lisa has since become an international bestseller of over twenty thriller novels, including the #1 NYT bestselling series, the FBI Profiler series, the Detective D.D Warren series and the Tessa Leoni series. She has had four books adapted into TV movies: At the Midnight Hour, The Perfect Husband, The Survivors Club and Hide, and has also made personal appearances on TruTV and CNN.

Her novel, The Neighbour, won Best Hardcover Novel from the International Thriller Writers and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle in France. She was also recognized with the Daphne du Maurier Award in 2000 for The Other Daughter. Lisa received the Silver Bullet Award from the International Thriller Writers in 2017 for her work on behalf of at-risk children and the Humane Society.

Research for Before She Disappeared

For her first standalone novel in over a decade, Lisa Gardner’s curiosity was piqued by a BBC article she read about the incredible real life civilians who dedicate their lives to solving missing people cold cases. After exploring more about this amazing group of Internet detectives and amateur P.Is, Lisa was inspired to write about a woman dedicating her life to finding missing people that the police and media too soon forget about. She was also drawn back to her old stomping ground of Boston where she lived for four years in the early ‘90s and spent several weeks exploring the inner-city neighbourhood of Mattapan and its uniquely Haitian culture. As with all her novels, Lisa conducted extensive interviews with law enforcement, including a former Superintendent Chief of the Boston Police Force to discover how someone can simply disappear in modern day Boston.

The right person, asking the right questions can make all the difference.

My Review – Before She Disappeared

This book is intense – its starts that way and just keeps galloping along. I added the bit above about Lisa’s research, as it shows, throughout the book that this isn’t just made up. Theres real thought and planning, put in and it is clear Lisa has passion about her writing.

We meet Frankie Elkin, she’s just found her 14th missing person and is moving on to the next. Angelique Lovely Badeau or Lili to her family. She’s 15, was 15 when she went missing, so 16 now, (hopefully) as that was along 11 months ago. But the Police haven’t called with an update for a while now and the trails gone cold. Frankie is making it her business to find ‘Angel’ . She moves to Mattapan, or Murderpan as the locals call it, in Boston and gets bar work with a room thrown in.

She’s goes to visit Angelique’s family, as getting their permission is her first priority, also to get a feel for Angelique and find out any more details that could help her. She’s met with hostility, not just by the family, but the local Police and residents. Why would this woman search, for free, for a missing girl? The whole situation is intimidating, but for Frankie, who’s gone through this many times before, its all part of the process.

And so she begins, talking to Angelique’s friends, checking the locations she went, her school. And Angelique’s little brother Emmanuel turns out to be a great source of information. They came to live with their Aunt when an earthquake struck Haiti 10 years ago, but will need visa’s to stay. Angel wants to be a Dr, she clever, vibrant and desperate to make these things happen.

It takes time, but it all clicks into place for Frankie and the links become clear, but by that stage it’s got to the point of urgency and she needs to act quickly. Frankie is doing this to forget her own past, she’s running from her own demons and by keeping real people at arms length, she can keep the demons there too.