Before She Disappeared
by Lisa Gardner
Frankie Elkin arrives in Boston, a city she’s never visited, with all her possessions in a single suitcase. She’s a middle-aged white woman “with more regrets than belongings, more sad stories than happy ones.”
Angelique Badeau is fifteen, and she’s been missing for eleven months. She’s in the US on a nearly-expired ten-year visa, living with her Haitian aunt and younger brother. She left her Boston high school one Friday evening, and nobody has seen her since. The police have pretty well given up, though the case is still open.
Finding missing people is what Frankie does, and she’s here to find Angelique. Frankie isn’t a police officer or private detective. She doesn’t get paid: her missing-persons work is a volunteer passion. So far she’s managed to find 48 missing people, mostly through pure doggedness and an ability to get information from people who won’t talk to the police.
She’s moved from city to city, supporting herself with the only job she knows how to do: bartending. Not the ideal job for an alcoholic, even one who’s been sober for nine years. But tending bar in the evenings leaves a lot of daytime hours free for investigating.
And this particular job comes with an extra perk: a one-room apartment upstairs over the bar. Complete with a resident cat, one with sharp claws and a fierce sense of place.
To find out where Angelique has ended up, Frankie needs to know more about what happened in the weeks and months before she disappeared. She has to work her way into the confidence of Angelique’s family and friends, all of whom are understandably wary of this odd, nosy white woman.
The story continues from there, with many plot twists, surprises, and rising tension right to he end. Frankie is a great character, one who could well sustain a continuing series if Gardner decides to go that way.
Before She Disappeared, published in 2021, is a standalone thriller, though Gardner is best known for three long-running crime series (with protagonists Quincy & Rainie, D.D. Warren, Tessa Leoni). She’s a master of suspense, with books featuring twisty plots and smart female protagonists .
Gardiner was born in Hillsboro, Oregon in 1971, and wrote her first novel at 17. In the 1990s she worked in Boston as a researcher, and meanwhile began publishing romances under the name Alicia Scott. Harlequin published her first novel, Walking After Midnight in 1992, followed by a dozen more.
The first book published under Gardner’s own name was The Perfect Husband (1998), introducing FBI profiler Kimberly Quincy. (That book later became a TV movie.) Gardner is a prolific writer, regularly producing at least a book a year. Her longest-running series—with twelve novels and three short stories so far—features Boston homicide detective D.D. Warren.
Her books are now internationally acclaimed bestsellers. She has won several awards, including the Daphne du Maurier Award in 2000 for The Other Daughter (a standalone suspense novel) and Best Hardcover Novel from Thrillerfest in 2010 for The Neighbor (third in the D.D. Warren series.)
Gardner lives in New Hampshire with her husband, daughter and dogs.