Massachusetts State Trooper, Bobby Dodge, is called to a hostage situation in a wealthy district in Boston. An armed man has barricaded himself in his apartment with his wife and child. When it looks as though he is about to pull the trigger, Bobby a trained sniper - shoots him through the head from his position across the street. Then the investigation starts: should he have waited? Were his actions justified? Was the pleading look he thought he saw from the woman enough to believe her and her son;s lives were about to be taken? From then on, Bobby is tormented by doubts and guilt which he pours out to a State Police appointed psychologist. For a man steeped in police procedure he then begins to do some very stupid things including falling for the woman in the case, Catherine (mother of the sickly child, daughter-in-law of the overbearing judge, erstwhile sexual plaything of the psychopathic killer, arch-manipulator of men and now suspected of engineering the hostage situation in order to get her husband shot). He meets with her when he so obviously shouldn’t, runs to her side to protect her in the most unlikely of circumstances, confronts the judge when he has been warned by everyone around him to stay away and generally gets led around by the nose (or another part of his anatomy). She is devastatingly beautiful by the way.
The book is fast-paced and action packed and if you like a high body count along with your tension then this may be one for you. The many fans of Lisa Gardner’s high-octane books I’m sure won’t be disappointed by Alone.
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Ruth Wade
Earlier titles are The Perfect Husband, The Other Daughter, The Third Victim, The Next Accident, The Survivors