Gone is the fifth 
Mo Hayder is a fascinating author, and has a rapidly increasing audience. The best of her previous books, to my mind, are Birdman and The Treatment. Gone is in some ways even better even though it is somewhat less “edgy”. It is more of a traditional police procedural than the previous books in the Caffery series.
Gone is set in the West Country of England. We meet up with detective Jack Caffery as he arrives to interview the victim of a car-jacking. Two things make this car-jacking stand out: The car was taken by force, and in the back seat of the car was an eleven year old girl. She is still missing. Caffery thinks this is yet another quite ordinary carjacking, and that the girl will soon be re-united with her parents. He even promises the parents that their little girl will be back to celebrate her birthday the next day. But he is wrong-as it turns out, very wrong.
Caffery soon learns that there have been other cases like this in the past. Sometimes the children are returned, sometimes not. And before long the jacker communicates with the police: ‘It’s started,’ he tells them. ‘And it ain’t going to stop just sudden, is it?’ And soon another car with another child in the back seat is taken. And the perpetrator seems to be either very smart or extremely lucky; at every turn he is one step ahead of the police. He somehow manages to avoid all the surveillance cameras monitoring roads and seems to know everything the police do.
Gone also features Flea, the head of the Avon and Somerset underwater search unit. She is a resourceful and determined investigator, and something about this case haunts her. She keeps following up on possible clues on her own; even putting her own life at risk to try to discover where the jacker keeps his victims or hides their bodies.
Caffery is an excellent detective; some say he is the best in the business. But this time he is up against an extraordinarily clever foe and feels he is not making progress at all. Something is seriously wrong, and with every passing second the likelihood of finding the little girls alive declines. Caffery is under intense pressure to find the missing girls – dead or alive.
Gone is excellently well-plotted and very well written. It is a fast paced crime fiction novel rooted in family tragedy. Strong characterizations, lots of suspense, and (towards the end) nail-biting intensity drive the story. With Gone, Mo Hayder is back with a bang; it’s a very well-crafted and entertaining book that I loved reading, and strongly recommend.
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.Praise for Gone by Mo Hayder:
“Where she differs from her peers is her almost outlandish imagination. Hayder pushes the boundaries of what’s been said and written before… Brilliantly perceptive portrayals of the victims and very clever, sympathetic plotting, not to mention an acute capturing of police procedure – Gone is Mo Hayder’s most compulsive thriller yet.” —Daily Mirror
Mo Hayder raises the bar high when it comes to crime fiction and she’s done it again with this clever, stomach-churning, fast-paced, top-notch thriller.”
—Angela Cooke, Sunday Express“Hayder, again, proves expert at ratcheting up the tension.”
—Irish Independent
“Mo Hayder’s speciality, from her bleak and brilliant debut Birdman on, has been a particularly potent blend of terror and horror to create a suspense that not only grips her readers by the scruff of the neck but takes a firm hold on their intestines, too” —The Times
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