LIVE TO TELL by Lisa Gardner
What has happened to Lisa Gardner? I read a few of her earlier novels and was not impressed at all. Therefore I was reluctant to pick up her latest LIVE TO TELL. Only the information of the subject matter on the flyleaf drew my interest. After I had read only a few pages I knew this was a much better author than the one I had remembered. The book held me transfixed from beginning to end.
LIVE TO TELL is billed as a “Detective D D Warren Series #4”. I hadn’t read any of the other D D Warren stories so this book served as my introduction. She is a fascinating character. Pushing forty she has biological clock worries as well as find a man trouble. She refuses to panic and goes about her work as a police detective in an efficient manner.
One day she catches a multiple homicide case. It appears a man has killed his wife and three children and then turned the gun on himself. He is still alive but it doesn’t look like he will make it. At first DD thinks it is an open and shut case but then her suspicions grow.
In the same city a woman named Victoria is raising her eight year old son, and she is barely surviving. Her son has mental and emotional problems and is physically abusive to her. At times Victoria fears for her life.
Another woman, Danielle, works at the hospital in a ward for emotionally damaged children. When she was a child she survived the massacre of her family, but she has emotional scars that persist to haunt her. As the date of the anniversary of that massacre approaches Danielle finds herself falling apart.
Gardner creates these three stories separately and then combines them at the end. She manages to make their integration logical. It takes a while to understand where Gardner is going with it all but when it reaches the climax you understand and appreciate her skills.
LIVE TO TELL is a serious novel about a serious subject. The information about the emotionally damaged children is presented in a non-sensational manner. The descriptions of the situations in which these children fins themselves are horrific in and of themselves, but the telling of their stories is never out of context to what is happening in the main story.
With this book Gardner establishes herself as a talented writer. Her story is complex and bizarre in some ways but she manages to control it from beginning to end. Since it is so engrossing to read, I will be eagerly awaiting the next book she turns out.
LIVE TO TELL is published by Random House. It contains 400 pages and sells for $26.00.