The story is all over the news -- two young acting students found naked and dehydrated in the hills of Malibu, recounting a terrifying story of abduction and abuse. It becomes even more newsworthy a few days later when it's revealed the couple staged the abduction as a kind of "acting exercise." Imagine the headlines when a few weeks later one of the pair is murdered and her partner in crime has gone missing.
Working the case is LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis, with a little help from psychologist Alex Delaware. Clues keep leading the pair back to The Playhouse, where the victim and her partner met. Alex and Milo must sort out fact from fiction while dealing with people who tell lies for a living.
GONE is a fast-paced, engrossing thriller. This being the 20th entry in the Alex Delaware series, relationships are firmly established and not fully explained to the novice reader. While it would be interesting to know how Alex became involved in helping Milo investigate murders, not knowing does not detract from the reader's enjoyment.
The incomparable team of psychologist Alex Delaware and
homicide cop Milo Sturgis embark on their most dangerous
excursion yet, into the dark places where risk runs high
and blood runs cold.
Itβs a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan
Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting
students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three
days later, the two of them are found in the remote
mountains of Malibu -battered and terrified after a
harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor.
The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and
brutal: The couple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked
assailant and subjected to a horrific regimen of
confinement, starvation and assault.
But before long, doubts arise about the coupleβs story, and
as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a
hoax. Charged as criminals themselves, the aspiring actors
claim emotional problems, and the court orders
psychological evaluation for both.
Michaela is examined by Alex Delaware, who finds that her
claims of depression and stress ring true enough. But they
donβt explain her lies, and Alex is certain that there are
hidden layers in this sordid psychodrama that even he
hasnβt been able to penetrate.
Nevertheless, the case is closedβonly to be violently
reopened when Michaela is savagely murdered. When the
police look for Dylan, they find that heβs gone. Is he the
killer or a victim himself? Casting their dragnet into the
murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and Sturgis unearth more
questions than answersβincluding a host of eerily identical
killings. What really happened to the couple who cried
wolf? And what bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the
city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?
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