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Product Description
Review
“Lisa Gardner always delivers heart-stopping suspense.”—Harlan Coben
“Taut as a piano wire and just as well-played . . . a suspenseful roller-coaster ride.”—Karin Slaughter
“Compelling . . . another gripping thriller.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Taut as a piano wire and just as well-played . . . a suspenseful roller-coaster ride.”—Karin Slaughter
“Compelling . . . another gripping thriller.”—Booklist (starred review)
Book Description
LISA GARDNER WINNER OF THE ITW AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL*
On a warm summer night, in a working-class Boston neighborhood, four family members are brutally murdered. The father—and possible suspect—clings to life in the ICU. Murder-suicide? Or something even worse? Veteran police detective D. D. Warren is certain of only one thing: There’s more to this case than meets the eye.
Danielle Burton is not only a dedicated nurse at a locked-down pediatric psych ward but the haunted survivor of a shattered life. Meanwhile, devoted mother Victoria Oliver will do anything to ensure that her troubled son has some semblance of a childhood.
The lives of these three women unfold and connect in unexpected ways, as sins from the past emerge—and stunning secrets reveal just how tightly blood ties can bind. Sometimes the most devastating crimes are the ones closest to home.
* The Neighbor (Best Hardcover Novel)
On a warm summer night, in a working-class Boston neighborhood, four family members are brutally murdered. The father—and possible suspect—clings to life in the ICU. Murder-suicide? Or something even worse? Veteran police detective D. D. Warren is certain of only one thing: There’s more to this case than meets the eye.
Danielle Burton is not only a dedicated nurse at a locked-down pediatric psych ward but the haunted survivor of a shattered life. Meanwhile, devoted mother Victoria Oliver will do anything to ensure that her troubled son has some semblance of a childhood.
The lives of these three women unfold and connect in unexpected ways, as sins from the past emerge—and stunning secrets reveal just how tightly blood ties can bind. Sometimes the most devastating crimes are the ones closest to home.
* The Neighbor (Best Hardcover Novel)
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disturing and Suspenseful: Couldn't Put This One Down,
By
This review is from: Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (Hardcover)
Lisa Gardner is an auto-buy author or me even if her latest books do get released in hardcover. The back cover jacket states Lisa Gardner will mess with your head so get ready...Live to Tell is pretty intense. This is no fluff read and even though the subject matter was a times hard to read...I couldn't put it down.Although Detective DD Warren has appeared in previous novels, this story is not about her per se. It's about 3 women and how their lives intersect as DD and her squad race to uncover the connection between 2 entire families who have been murdered in their own homes, these 2 women and their own horrifying stories. DD Warren is tough, has a mouth like a truck driver, can eat anyone under the table with the metabolism to match and she has no time for a personal live - even though she would like to have one. She's a career cop and married to her job. Out on a date for the first time in a long time, she's hoping it ends in the horizontal mambo when her pager goes off - or what she likes to refer to it as...birth control. The only action DD's going to see this night is of the murderous variety. Danielle a pediatric psych nurse and Victoria a loving mother are the other main characters. What was interesting and different in their story-telling was Gardner chose to tell their story in 1st person. Although I am not a fan of 1st person narration, I will admit for their story - it worked particularly for Victoria. Victoria`s story was one of a mother's unconditional love and extreme gut wrenching emotion. You can not help but feel for her and all the sacrifices she has made in the name of love for her family. I felt like I was right there with her, experiencing her overwhelming despair, living every day in fear and terror from her oh so psychotic eight year old son and yet her devotion to him is unwavering. How did she find the strength every day to get out of bed and survive and live under those conditions? Danielle's story was one of a survivor and guilt. She is the lone remaining member of her immediate family after her own family was murdered in the worst way imaginable when she was just a child. Now Danielle works with children at the Pediatric Evaluation Clinic of Boston. These children and their sad disturbing stories will tug at your heartstrings, send chills through you and keep you riveted to every page until the end. So what's the connection? How are Danielle and Victoria a part of a murderous rampage being investigated by DD Warren and what part do the sad children in the mental ward on the top floor of the Boston hospital have to do with anything? Make sure you reserve a block of time before starting Live to Tell, because you won't be able to put it down until you reach the end.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Crimes from the Past Meet with the Present,
By
This review is from: Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (Hardcover)
Reason for Reading: I'm a fan of the author and had read the previous book in the series.This book had me from the beginning as it dealt with some of my favourite topics, mental health and psychiatric wards. Plus it was back to my favourite kind of thriller, that of the serial killer though this time with a twist: a mass murderer serial killer. D.D. Warren is a great female character who can carry a book on her own. This time her partner Phil has a shadow, Alex, a former agent who has been a Professor at the Academy for years. D.D. compares Alex to George Clooney and he soon becomes her shadow and main partner throughout the crime solving. We start off by meeting a handful of severely disturbed children, mostly through abuse, who are living on an acute psychiatric ward. We also meet an 8yo boy who is also suffering from a multitude of psychiatric disorders and diagnoses and ultimately he is at risk of harming others but his mother has decided to take full responsibility for his care. This ultimately lead to her husband leaving her and taking their daughter with him for safety's sake. Warren's case opens when a family is found murdered in their home. It looks like the father killed the kids, mother and then shot himself but then they realize it may be a murder case. Then another family is killed in their home. This time the father has obviously been posed to look as if he killed himself after murdering the family. Who killed these families? They seem to have absolutely no connections whatsoever so how could they possibly be related? Are they? For nurse Danielle this becomes all so real as it brings back the 25yo memory of the night her father shot and killed her mother and two siblings but left her as the lone survivor, on purpose. As I said, I love D.D. as a character but I do think it a shame that the author has to write her as someone so obsessed with s*x. As a single women, D.D.'s constant inside chatter and vocal lamentations of when she will ever get *it* again are rather disturbing and unnecessary to this reader. But thankfully readers are not privy to anything more real. Another fabulous read from Gardner. A page-turner and exciting. I had my eye on the wrong person for most of the book, which is always fun for me when I don't figure it out right away. The reveal wasn't terribly surprising in the end but the driving force and motive of the killer was a real shocker and well done. An incredibly engrossing story that not only thrilled but was fascinating with details on how children abused beyond the point of psychological return can be treated, cared for and most of all shown love.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (145 customer reviews) 99 of 103 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Harrowing Story of Violent Children Mixed With Murder Mystery,
By Jennifer "Jenners" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (Hardcover)
I've read almost all of Lisa Gardner's books (with my favorites being her Quincy and Rainie books). Lately, though, I was wondering if she had lost her mojo. I thought her last book, The Neighbor, was just OK. But I'm nothing if not loyal (until you write at least three awful books in a row), so I thought I'd give Gardner another try. Well, I'm glad I gave Gardner the benefit of the doubt because this book was one of her better ones.There are a lot of books out there (including Gardner's books) that deal with twisted psyches and unimaginable violence. But what makes this book so disturbing is that it acknowledges that sometimes the twisted psyches belong to children. In her Author's Note, Gardner talks about friends of hers who had a troubled child and their struggles to find a way to save their son. Like Gardner, I tended to believe that troubled children were that way because of abuse and neglect. It is easier to understand how children who have been beaten, abused, tortured, or neglected become violent or primal. What isn't easy to understand is when a child with loving and attentive parents is violent. Isn't such behavior the result of nurture ... not nature? I think we all would prefer to believe this. But, as we learn throughout this book, that isn't always the case. Sometimes children are born without the psychological make-up they need to interact appropriately with others. Mental health professionals and facilities (like the locked-down pediatric psych ward described in the book) are working with these children to help them function in society. This is Gardner's fourth D.D. Warren book, and I'm still unclear why D.D. is a recurring character as she doesn't seem particularly well-developed. Four books in and all I really know about her is that she is too involved with her job to have a life. Although Gardner attempts to give Warren a bit of romance in this book, I didn't find that storyline all that compelling, and I honestly don't give much thought to this being "A Detective D.D. Warren Novel." (A fact that was trumpeted across the front of my ARC.) To be honest, the characters of Danielle and Victoria were better developed than D.D.'s character. This doesn't really detract from the book, I guess. D.D. simply functions as the reader's way of getting information to solve the crime. Yet it seems a bit odd to create a detective and build books around her without giving her much of a personal life or back story. My Final Recommendation If you're a Lisa Gardner fan, I think this was one of her better books. The story is disturbing and harrowing and will take you to places you might not want to go. If you're a fan of disturbing, psychological mysteries, this would be an excellent choice for you. However, if these types of books aren't your cup of tea, stay away! This book is candid in its descriptions of violent children and makes you want to take a long hot shower afterward. 51 of 59 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bad woo-woo on the interplanes,
By Linda Bulger - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
LIVE TO TELL is the fourth book in best-selling author Lisa Gardner's Detective D.D. Warren series; for all the horror of its subject matter, readers will find it impossible to put down. D.D. Warren is a thirty-eight year old blonde, head of a three-person homicide unit in the Boston Police Department. Her work gives her little time for a personal life.The call that interrupts D.D.'s latest blind date is horrific: a "family annihilation," the murder-suicide of a family of five. It appears that the father succumbed to the pressure of financial problems and perpetrated this terrible deed. But when another family suffers the same fate the very next night, D.D.'s cop instinct tells her to look for connections--and the connections lead to a locked-down children's acute psych unit where the most troubled of children are brought for care. One of the caregivers at the psych unit, Danielle, has her own crushing past. She was the sole survivor of the near-annihilation of her own family and, unable to leave the past behind, she is burying herself in her work as the twenty-fifth anniversary of that event draws near. It's clear that Danielle is in some sense a link between the past and the present, but what is the nature of that link? The medical system offers all too little for these explosive children and their families. Some are the victims of abuse or gross neglect but others have caring families and are victims of their own chemistry. The pharmaceuticals that usually work on adults with crippling mood disorders are far less effective in children. The kind of collaborative therapies that have some success in a locked therapeutic environment are extremely hard to maintain in a family home. Is it any wonder that families sometimes seek healing from a different plane--the spiritual plane? Several of the families in D.D.'s case have worked with a spiritual healer who teaches the children techniques for fighting off the darkness threatening to overwhelm their spirits. We may not warm to the character of the healer, Andrew, and D.D. is intensely skeptical of his work with (as he describes it) "souls in the interplanes," locked in the void between the planes of existence, struggling to complete their missions and move on. Even Andrew himself refers to his work as "woo-woo" but claims it's as valid as a good cop's intuition. Dark though the story is, the writing is so effective that you are in a sense left to draw your own conclusions in the end. The good guys win and the bad guys lose, and that's all we really need to know. Or ... is it? Linda Bulger, 2010 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intensely gripping psychological thriller,
By Elizabeth A. White - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (Hardcover)
Live To Tell, the fourth novel by Lisa Gardner featuring Boston PD detective D. D. Warren, opens with Warren being called out to the scene of a horrific mass murder; an entire family is dead, the wife and three kids apparently killed by the husband before he shot himself in the head.Something about the case doesn't feel quite right to Warren, but before she can identify what it is another family is killed, also in an apparent mass murder-suicide scenario. This time, however, the autopsy is conclusive: the husband was dead before the supposed self-inflicted gunshot was fired. Someone else killed these families. Warren's quest to find out who really committed the brutal murders and how - if at all - they were connected leads her to a pediatric psych ward that specializes in mentally unbalanced children who've displayed violence toward themselves or others. Turns out both families had a child who had spent time there. Yet, in both cases the violent child was one of the murder victims, so what other connection could there be? Perhaps it lies with Danielle Burton, one of the pediatric nurses at the facility, who herself is the lone survivor of a massacre that claimed her entire family... the 25th anniversary of which is only two days away. Or maybe it's new age healer Andrew Lightfoot, who had been advising at least one of the families on how to `treat' their child's violent behavioral issues, who holds the key. And how do divorced mother Victoria Oliver and her astonishingly violent eight-year-old son, Evan, fit into the mix? As Warren figures out exactly how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, author Gardner takes the reader deep into a subject one does not see addressed with such frankness often in crime fiction: children with serious, violent mental disorders. Not "Damien from the Omen" or Children of The Corn kids, but real young people struggling with mental and chemical imbalances which cause them to act out in horrific ways. It's sobering material that, mishandled, could come across as sensational or exploitative. But Gardner has obviously done her homework on the topic, and weaves interesting details about such children and how they are treated into what is an intensely gripping psychological thriller. |
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