Product Description

Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro have been hired to find a six-year-old girl who vanished from her home without a trace. Despite enormous public attention, extensive news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation has gone nowhere. But it's a case rife with sinister circumstances: a strangely indifferent mother, a pedophile couple, a bizarre subculture of homeless parents, and a shadowy police unit with a covert agenda and no qualms about enforcing it.

When a second child disappears, the sleuths face a local media more interested in sensationalizing the abductions than solving them, a police force seething with lethal secrets, and a faceless power determined to keep the kids lost forever. Caught in a deadly tangle of lies and betrayal, Patrick and Angie must confront the horror of what the world can inflict on its children in order to unravel a riddle that's anything but child's play.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1447670 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-28
• Released on: 2002-08-28
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook, CD
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 3
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

One of the best books in this series
Gone, Baby, Gone is one of Lehane's best Kenzie/Gennaro books, even though its subject matter, the kidnapping and abuse of children, isn't particularly sunny. Patrick and Angela are called on to investigate the disappearance of four-year-old Amanda McCready, who lives with an awful, distracted, zero of a mother. Her inattention to her daughter and her needs is painted so vividly that it is easy to hope that, wherever she is, Amanda's life is somehow better. This disappearance leads the detectives into a morass of drug dealers and pedophiles and crooked police.

Ultimately, it all leads to a gripping, heart-breaking climax that is pretty much a no-win situation for all involved. Sure, there are some contrivances in the plot that bring us to this point--as other reviewers have pointed out--but this is still one heck of a powerful book, with vivid characters and a real sense of setting and community. We can see how the neighborhood gives birth to monsters like Cheese Olamon and Angie's and Patrick's "friend" Bubba, while others choose another route for their lives. This is a step up from the previous book, Sacred, and shows Lehane getting ready for the powerhouse book to come, Mystic River.

Don't Read This Book....
This fourth book in this great series is Lehane's best one yet. The ending is very thought provoking and will stay with you for awhile. One very important piece of information is NOT to read this book if you haven't read the previous three. Information is disclosed that gives away the endings of some of the previous novels so they work best when read in order. Believe me when I say you'll want to read all of them.

Unsettling, Honest Fourth Outing
Reading about the scum of humanity that Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro come up against is like watching a David Fincher movie. It's all grit staring you right in the face with unflinching honesty.The fourth book in the detective series has the duo searching for a missing child. In true Lehane fashion, there are more twists than a crazy straw, and the plot gets deeper and deeper and more horrifying as the truth comes out. Luckily there's the character of Bubba to add some needed comic relief to the story. A story that's hard to put down, and harder to shake when you finish it.