Alone

I couldn’t stop once I started. And I like how the characters are used in the next book as well!!

Read most of her books and love them But alone was not one of my favorites Bobby dodge was boring, Could not Stay out of trouble and had trouble making decisions by himself Also he broke most if not all rules of a Crime scene

Bobby Dodge is a Massachusetts State Trooper and has been a member of the STOP team for six years. A position in which he is called to duty as a sniper/observer an average of three times a month. He has never had to fire a weapon in the line of duty and has become accustomed to hostage and standoff situations being resolved peacefully. Jimmy Gagnon has his wife Catherine and his four year old son Nathan held hostage at gunpoint. Bobby is observing from across the street with his sniper rifle at the ready. When he sees the look of murder on Jimmy's face he is forced to do what he has always hoped that he would never have to do. Take a life to save a life. Bobby does not know the identity of the people involved, but he takes a certain amount of comfort in the knowledge that he has done his duty. The shooting becomes a high profile case when it is revealed that Jimmy Gagnon was the son of a Superior Court Judge. An instantaneous act in the line of duty triggers a chain of events with many questions unanswered. Was it an act of domestic abuse that got out of hand, or was it something more sinister? Could it have been a brilliantly engineered act of murder? These questions and many more arise as the subsequent events destroy lives and reach to the level of the judge's office. I was introduced to the work of Lisa Gardner last month when I read Hide which is the sequel to Alone. These two stories each stand on their own but would be better if read in sequence. Alone is masterfully written and ties many of the events in Hide together. This one is equally spellbinding and in the end leaves just enough questions unanswered to let you draw some of your own conclusions without leaving you feeling empty. Reading this one confirmed what I suspected after reading Hide and that is that Lisa Gardner has the gift to tell stories that will captivate readers. I will be anxiously awaiting her next masterpiece.

I love the way Lisa Garndner writes and her stories, this book was no exception. It is a very fast paced story and a great read.

"Alone", by Lisa Gardner, NY, Bantam, 2004 ISBN 0-553-80253-4 (hc), 324 p., by author of 6 prior NYT best-selling novels (plus 13 others under a.k.a. Alicia Scott). Gardner at her finest renders a suspense novel entwining lives of police sniper Bobby Dodge and Boston socialite Catherine Gagnon with those messed-up lives of their ovn parents and "lustmord" of pedophilist Richard Umbrio. So yes, there's rape abduction, police homicides, and an escalating mess of murder by knife, hanging?, gun -- by chilling variant divating means. We are immersed into finely-tuned and researched machinations of SWAT techniques, of alleged spousal & child abuse, of aftermath of incest, pedophilia and inappropriate use of financial and judicial power, and importantly a heartening and occasionally disheartening look into survival techniques used by people suffering from imperfections and fragility of the human condition and where the bottom line rings true that blood runs thicker than thieves. Gardner's command of language, be it technical, romantic, carnal, or merely weaving fact with fiction is simply superb -- when novels get this good it is hard to say enough and I'd love to have a signed copy. Deservedly, I give it 5***** without hesitation.

Bobby Dodge, member of the elite STOP team in Boston, MA, which deals with dangerous police situations, has just completed a grim task: as a sniper he has ended the life of a husband Jimmy Gagnon, who seemingly was on the verge of harming either his wife Catherine or his son Nathan. And to add to Bobby's distress at having to kill another man, he is immediately attacked by Jimmy's father, Judge James Gagnon, a powerful Boston personage, for acting rashly and caving in to the manipulations of Catherine. But what is it about the past of Bobby, Catherine, and Jimmy, and even the Judge, that has led to this point? Lisa Gardner expertly combines the unfolding of traumatic disturbances in their lives with rapid fire developments in the present. Given her history, could Catherine, one with elegant, fragile beauty, orchestrate her own husband's death? Maybe Bobby knew more about the Gagnon's then he is telling - are his actions completely innocent? Why is the Judge's and his wife's past shrouded in mystery? This is Lisa Gardner's best book, and most of her previous books were quite good. The plot is great and it moves. Yet the characters get the right amount of attention. And there are some nice twists. This latest effort by Gardner will disappoint few.

When a tactical swat team is deployed to defuse a domestic abuse hostage situation, Judge Gagnon's son Jimmy is killed. Was the whole thing engineered by the beautiful wife, Catharine Gagnon? Catharine claims she was abused. Her grieving in-laws claim she is the abuser. They believe she deliberately made her young son sick to control Jimmy. And who is controlling the mysterious serial rapist who is now stalking Catharine? This book is a real page turner. I couldn't put it down. It's a suspense filled ride sure to keep you up all night reading, but make sure you keep the lights on!