| | |  | Amazon Kindle | Home » » » Alone (D. D. Warren) | | | | | | | Description: | | BONUS: This edition includes the full text of the novel plus the following content:
-- Lisa Gardner on Detective D.D. Warren: Who was the inspiration for D.D. Warren? Find out in this essay.
-- An excerpt from Lisa Gardner’s Love You More.
-- From the network that brought you Mad Men, and The Walking Dead, comes an addictive crime thriller with crushing twists. Get an exclusive peek at the script for The Killing, AMC’s newest original series, which tracks the murder of a Seattle teenager and the gripping investigation it sparks. April 3 at 9/8c, only on AMC.
Alone . . . Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches a tense hostage standoff unfold through the scope of his sniper rifle. Just across the street, in wealthy Back Bay, Boston, an armed man has barricaded himself with his wife and child. The man’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dodge has only a split second to react . . . and forever pay the consequences.
Alone . . . that’s where the nightmare began for cool, beautiful, and dangerously sexy Catherine Rose Gagnon. Twenty-five years ago, she was buried underground during a month-long nightmare of abduction and abuse. Now her husband has just been killed. Her father-in-law, the powerful Judge Gagnon, blames Catherine for his son’s death . . . and for the series of unexplained illnesses that have sent her own young son repeatedly to the hospital.
Alone . . . a madman survived solitary confinement in a maximum security prison where he’d done hard time for the most sadistic of crimes. Now he walks the streets a free man, invisible, anonymous . . . and filled with an unquenchable rage for vengeance. What brings them together is a moment of violence—but what connects them is a passion far deeper and much more dangerous. For a killer is loose who’s woven such an intricate web of evil that no one is above suspicion, no one is beyond harm, and no one will see death coming until it has them cornered, helpless, and alone. | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
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Average Customer Review:
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
393 of 407 found the following review helpful:
 Gardner's best effort to dateJan 27, 2005
By J. Grattan
"Ideas can move the world"
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.
129 of 137 found the following review helpful:
 Fun to Read Page-turnerAug 24, 2005
By Rebecca Kinson
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.
78 of 87 found the following review helpful:
"Alone" has it all: abuse, lust, murder, revenge and healingFeb 06, 2005
By Russell A. Rohde MD
"Owl"
"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.
49 of 57 found the following review helpful:
 Apparently, I'm in the minority...Jun 15, 2005
By Swim Mom
"Swim Mom"
but I hated this book. I always look forward to a Lisa Gardner book, but this one was a great disappointment. First off, I hated the heroine Catherine (if that's what you can call her). I realize she had a traumatic experience as a child, but she grew up to be an unlikeable woman. She manipulates, cheats, sets up an innocent police officer and is very unapologetic about it. The whole book overall is depressing. You like to see a little bit of hope or happiness in a novel, but this has none of that. The police officer is suspended, oh, and he also had an abusive childhood, and don't forget he's an alcoholic, oh, and let's not forget her childhood tragedy, and her postpartum depression, and how she was willing to just hand off her kid to a nanny, oh, and her kid is sick and her husband is abusive and her in-laws are awful...I could go on and on. I did like the hero Bobby, and I did have hope that he would end up happy, and he kind of did, except he walked away from the woman he loved and never went back. Great. And the tragedy continues. The story ends with the police still trying to get Catherine. I actually skipped parts of the book because I thought it just all seemed so unreal. I kept waiting for it to get better, but it never did. I like heart-wrenching stories, but I just didn't care enough about the characters to shed a single tear. I'm hoping her next novel isn't this bad.
13 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Stupid and cheesyJun 02, 2005
By J. Green
Bobby Dodge is a police sniper who is called to a hostage situation. From his vantage point he witnesses a husband threatening his wife and small child with a handgun. When it becomes apparent that the man is about to shoot the woman, Bobby blows him away, and his troubles begin. The dead man was the only son of an influential judge, who alleges that the dead man's wife, Catherine Gagnon, orchestrated the whole situation. Soon Bobby is accused of having an affair with the widow, and begins his own investigation while on mandatory leave from the police department. What he uncovers is chilling and before he knows it he's in over his head.
There's little suspense to the story, as the author basically lays everything out, and doesn't bother to try to hide much. The main character of Officer Dodge is about the least likeable person possible, although Catherine Gagnon is probably worse. Bobby constantly follows the most illogical course of action in everything he does; repeatedly meeting with Catherine, Judge Gagnon and his private detectives, breaking up with a devoted and wonderful girlfriend, etc. A bunch of psycological nonsense is thrown in to explain his actions, of course, because he hates his mother. And, most ridiculous of all, is the *exciting* conclusion, with about the cheesiest writing imaginable - as they're trying to be quiet (lots of people have been killed, some by being punched) the mother-in-law starts into lengthy monologues of what's happened. And Catherine "reeking of gunpowder" after having fired several shots (all missing wildly), covered in perspiration, her hair matted to her head, and Bobby's thinking how beautiful she is. I laughed out loud! Add to it a dose of disgusting pedophilia and plenty of smut and foul languange, and I honestly can't recommend this book. I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1 simply because the story was mildly interesting, enough that I actually finished it.
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