Alone by Lisa Gardner (2006. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-58453-7)
Bobby Dodge takes the shot. He’s a SWAT sniper and he needs to take a life to save two lives. He does. His world starts spinning out of control, manipulated by Catherine Gagnon, a woman whose entire life (since being abducted and molested by a brutal rapist/murderer) has been a cardboard cutout of the American Dream. For it’s Catherine and her perpetually sickly son whom Bobby saves with the shot of a lifetime, the lives of the shooter and the saved becoming inexorably linked.
Tautly drawn. Fast paced. Gardner knows her genre and this book will not disappoint her fans or those readers who love hard boiled crime novels. But, having said that, I’m always a bit disappointed when I get done with a book like Alone, one often called a “beach” or a “summer” read. There’s plenty of characterization here. That’s not the issue (with maybe the exception of the main bad guy, a hulking, brutal stereotypical boogie man (child abductor) who is really scary but not very interesting). Setting? A bit on the perfunctory side. Dialogue? Exactly what you’d expect and demand out of a crime novel set in modern-day Boston. Plot? A tad predictable. (Spoiler alert: I figured out that the kid’s mysterious illness wasn’t Catherine’s fault pretty early on in the game.) Gardner even beat me to the punch by having a misbehaving judge as one of her central characters (as will be true in my own forthcoming crime novel, Laman’s River. See “Other Writings” and click on the title for an excerpt). My wife liked this book immensely. I won’t use that same adjective but I will agree it was first class entertainment and a good choice to break away from watching another “Law and Order” rerun on satellite.
The book promises much more depth and nuance than it ultimately delivers and that, in the end, is a bit disappointing. But take this review for what it is: A critique written by a writer whose usual fare runs to Chekov and Hemingway and only occasionally wanders into the realm of genre fiction.
3 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
