Long Gone by Alafair Burke #Review #Mystery #Crime #Suspense

After a long layoff and months of struggling, Alice Humphries finally lands her dream job managing a new art gallery in Manhattan's trendy Meat Packing District. According to Drew Campbell, the man who hires her, the gallery is the project of a wealthy, anonymous man who's starting the project for his prot�g�/lover.

By Carlene Rae Dater

All of Alice's friend think the opportunity is too good to be true, and in the back of her mind, Alice knows too knows something is off about the job. But she's struggled for years to come out of the shadow of her famous director father, and she sees this as her chance to make good.
Everything is perfect until the morning Alice arrives at work to find the walls of the gallery stripped bare of everything but the dead body of Drew Campbell resting in a pool of blood in the middle of the floor. Suddenly Alice finds her dream job is gone, she's the center of a police investigation and evidence is mounting against her.

This is an extremely interesting story that takes some time to unfold. There are several storylines that seem to have no connection but later begin to intersect. The characters are layered and it isn't clear who can be trusted even to the end. Many are ethically challenged without any redeeming qualities but there are enough who are to keep you invested in the outcome. It's a well-written story that kept my mind challenged throughout.

I admit I had a hard time getting into Long Gone because of the multiple story lines. I almost gave up put knew the disparate threads would come together eventually and they did. I was blow away at the intricate plotting and resolution. In my opinion, one of the treads was unnecessary and could easily have been dropped but it didn't detract from the story.

Too many children of famous authors have been writing and getting their novels published - and most are not good.

Fortunately Alafair Burke, daughter of writer James Lee Burke, inherited that great writing gene. She can write and write well. I've read both her Ellie Hatcher and Samantha Kincaid series and enjoyed them both. That said I'm glad Ms. Burke has decided to break out with a standalone novel. Too many series become stale and repetitious after a few books. I look forward to reading her next book and very soon I hope.

Carlene Rae Dater has been a writer of both fiction and non-fiction for over 25 years and has been published in a variety of genres. So far she has published nine novels and one non-fiction book and three novellas. She's a writing teacher at SWOCC in Southern Oregon and loves to share her craft with others.
Visit her blog at http://www.carlenedater.com with comments and questions. She also has an active mystery blog where she reviews books, movies, television shows and anything related to mystery! Check it out at: http://www.themysterystartshere.com.

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