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Lisa Gardner
Bantam, Feb 2007, $25.00
ISBN 0553804324

As part of a "family system," Boston Detective D.D. Warren spent her childhood packing two bags as she and her parents fled city after city with new identities until she was fourteen when her mom died and twenty-two when the taxi killed her father. Figuring she had nothing else to fear as she never knew what or who the Bad Thing is, she became a Boston police officer and now a detective.

Everything seems right for her as the past has been incinerated with her parents until the Boston Herald front-page declares she is dead. In the middle of the night from the former mental hospital at Mattapan, she calls her ex-lover, Massachusetts State Homicide Detective Bobby Dodge to come quickly and quietly as things are about to turn ugly. Six naked, mummified female bodies in see-through garbage bags have been found "buried" in an underground chamber. One of them had a silver locket with the words Annabelle M. Granger, a name D.D. used when her dad was an MIT professor. The past thought dead has come back to haunt the Police Sergeant even as a woman comes to the BPD with proof that she is the real Annabelle Granger.

The return of Bobby Dodge (see ALONE) in this superb thriller grips readers from the opening sequence as a young girl learns systems means sometimes fleeing and never slows down until the final exciting twist of an ending. The storyline is fast-paced as Bobby once again wonders about the dark secrets of females that he does not understand and how attracted he is to the latest Annabelle, who resembles the great manipulator Catherine Gagnon (once again see ALONE). Set aside time as this 384 page thriller will keep fans reading to learn what is the system that ties everyone together.

Harriet Klausner