“The Neighbor” by Lisa Gardner – The Deadly Burdens of Lust

In The Neighbor Lisa Gardner brings to us another Detective D.D. Warren novel in the series, and just like the previous ones, it follows the talented inspector as she looks into a rather peculiar case: the disappearance of a young and beautiful teacher in the middle of the night.

Though the police are quick to pin it all on the husband, Warren knows that there is much more going on than meets the eye, and soon her suspicions are proven right; a whole lineup of potential suspects comes out of the woodworks, and those include the couple’s neighbor, the woman’s father, the police forensics guy, and a thirteen year-old computer-savvy teenager.

Rather quickly, this detective novel turns into a more or less classic whodunit, with Gardner revealing bits and pieces of the puzzle along the way, just enough to get you going in one direction and then spin you around in the other.

We can never be entirely sure that things are what they seem, though I will admit that more experienced readers of the genre will have a decent chance of predicting the outcome of it all. Nevertheless, I can say that personally, the ending took me by surprise and I found it to be a rather nice twist to a story punctuated by them.

In addition to the solving of the mystery itself, Gardner also gives us a fair amount of insight into the missing woman. We are treated to numerous flashbacks of her life, shedding light on the kind of person she was, what drove her, and what deep-lurking desires she had left unsatisfied.

In the end, I found that this approach helps the reader get closer to the victim and more emotionally-attached to her, something many murder mystery novels sadly omit to do. Also, I have to say that Gardner’s propensity to write romance novels has spilled over into this book in some cases, with everyone being handsome and gorgeous, driven mostly by lust.

All in all, The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner is a solid detective novel that manages to put itself above many of its peers for its ability to condense together a number of different elements into a rather thrilling detective story. If you want to read a solid, enthralling and entertaining mystery novel, then this one should definitely be in your sights.

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Lisa Gardner Personal site Lisa Gardner is an American author who specializes in works of fiction, especially thrillers such as The Killing Hour and The Next Accident. In addition to that, she also penned a few romance novels under the pseudonym Alicia Scott, and claims to have heavily been influenced in her works by one of my all-time favorite movies, The Silence of the Lambs.