Alone

3 Responses to Alone

1. J. Grattan "book reviewer" says:

   February 23, 2011 at 1:48 pm

   280 of 288 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Gardner’s best effort to date, January 27, 2005

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   J. Grattan “book reviewer” (Lawrenceville, GA USA) –
   
     
   
     
   
     

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   This review is from: Alone (Hardcover)

   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.

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2. Rebecca Kinson says:

   February 23, 2011 at 2:03 pm

   83 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Fun to Read Page-turner, August 24, 2005

   By 

   Rebecca Kinson (Fredericksburg, VA United States) –
   
     

   This review is from: Alone (Hardcover)

   This is a psychological crime novel about a woman whose husband is killed by a police sniper. The sniper kills the man because he appears to be ready to shoot his wife. It turns out that the woman and the police sniper have psychological baggage — lots of it. The fact that the sniper kills the husband leads to an intense investigation, which is when all the twisting begins. The book has a villian that you just love to hate and a lovable child and puppy.

   I actually enjoyed this book, much to my surprise. I am usually not a fan of “crime format” books. But the book was fairly well written, easy to read, and had some twists that made it impossible to preconceive how the book was going to end. All in all, not a bad book — not great — but not bad. A good book for reading on an airplane.

   I will say that the twists and turns became a little confusing and it was somewhat hard to follow. Right up to the very end, I’m not sure exactly what happened. Maybe this was the author’s intention; I don’t know.

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3. Russell A. Rohde MD "Owl" says:

   February 23, 2011 at 2:21 pm

   64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

   
   “Alone” has it all: abuse, lust, murder, revenge and healing, February 5, 2005

   By 

   Russell A. Rohde MD “Owl” (West Covina, California USA) –
   
     

   This review is from: Alone (Hardcover)

   “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.

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