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A review by beirut_wedding
The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
2.0
This strange, awkward little mystery starts off well enough. It's a compelling puzzle, and for a long portion I'm completely invested in finding out what's going to happen and am intrigued by the unusual behavior of several of the characters. But it goes on too long without any answers and after a while I'm wondering if the writer has dug herself too big of a hole that she's not going to be able to get out of elegantly.
Sure enough, when the the question we've been waiting to have answered is finally answered, it's not just a letdown, it's a betrayal that undermines just about everything that has gone before. That's asinine, right?
And the "hero", D.D. Warren, well, let's just say she's no Sherlock Holmes or Mike and Lenny. She's good at being a bitch to all the usual suspects but she's lousy at finding out if there's even been a crime committed. Silliness. By the end of the book, when I realized the only characters I liked were the four year old and the child molester, I knew there was a problem. Two stars, because in spite of myself, I was caught up for the first half of the book and did want to find out what happened.
Sure enough, when the the question we've been waiting to have answered is finally answered, it's not just a letdown, it's a betrayal that undermines just about everything that has gone before.
Spoiler
The mystery is the wife's disappearance. She disappears and suspicion naturally falls on a)her husband, (who is bizarrely uncooperative with trying to find his missing wife) and b) the convicted sexual offender down the street. Sure. Great. All of that's good. Now, granted, all my knowledge of police work comes from books, TV and movies, so that is what it is, but it seems to me that the cops jumped to conclusions faster than I thought cops were routinely supposed to do. They decided she was missing before she'd been gone that long and they decided she'd been murdered before they even have a body. She is an adult after all. She could have just run away on her own. Which is what she did! But by the time that she decides to come back, her abusive father has re-entered the picture and killed the only sympathetic character in the book -- the child molester! And if she really was missing and the husband really had no knowledge of her whereabouts why wasn't he more helpful with the police??? What about the whole "black-ops" angle that was brought up? Was that just nothing? And why, why, why did she leave her daughter alone -- at night -- when this asshole's been around and leave her husband completely without explanation? So that they then have to go through the hell of a police investigation and media circus -- not to mention the worry about whether or not their wife/mother has been kidnapped or worse, the husband gets his ass kicked twice, and then she comes back and everything's supposed to be okay? I mean shit, is it just me?And the "hero", D.D. Warren, well, let's just say she's no Sherlock Holmes or Mike and Lenny. She's good at being a bitch to all the usual suspects but she's lousy at finding out if there's even been a crime committed. Silliness. By the end of the book, when I realized the only characters I liked were the four year old and the child molester, I knew there was a problem. Two stars, because in spite of myself, I was caught up for the first half of the book and did want to find out what happened.