Gone by Leona Deakin
I would like to thank Transworld/Random House for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Transworld
Published – Out Now on Kindle eBook 12th December paperback
Price – 99p Kindle eBook £7.99 paperback
Four strangers are missing. Left at their last-known locations are birthday cards that read: YOUR GIFT IS THE GAME. DARE TO PLAY? The police aren’t worried – it’s just a game. But the families are frantic. As psychologist and private detective Dr Augusta Bloom delves into the lives of the missing people, she finds something that binds them all. And that makes them very dangerous indeed. As more disappearance are reported and new birthday cards uncovered. Dr Bloom races to unravel the mystery and find the missing people. But what if, this time, they are the ones she should fear?
How well you know someone is sometimes our biggest fear. We all know the stories of those people who are ‘quiet and keep themselves to themselves’ who eventually turned out to be something a lot nastier. How many of those people are out there? In Leona Deakin’s intriguing thriller Gone this idea is explored setting up a new detective duo versus a very dangerous and unusual set of adversaries.
A brilliant teenage girl named Seraphina attacks a teacher with a pencil with cool precision; a young mother named Lana receives an unexpected birthday card offering her a chance of a game to play. These weirdly connected events start a tale that uncovers that a group of people have all mysteriously vanished over the last few months. But Lana’s appearance leaving her young daughter to her own devices means that Marcus Jameson former secret service agent and his colleague the brilliant but aloof Dr August Bloom are asked to investigate. A respected pair of private detectives and consultants who specialise in unusual cases they find that the disappeared all share very disturbing traits – double lives; ruthlessness, selfishness and Bloom gets worried that someone very dangerous has started an unusual recruitment process. In turn it appears the mastermind behind it all has decided that it’s a perfect time to settle the scores with Bloom from long ago.
What I really liked in this story is the hyper-reality that Deakin creates. This is a high concept thriller with a great hook. Four apparently random strangers all get a mysterious card that triggers their disappearance. The fun begins when we see that the people are all known to have other sides to their personalities that are extremely worrying. What on earth is going on? Deakin throws in the dark web; personality profiling and a group that really enjoy playing dangerous games with real people for high stakes even at the expense of the lives of others and it feels to fit the world here. It’s a glamorous fast paced thriller with a lot of people in jeopardy.
Into this we have a new duo of investigators in the form of Bloom and Jamieson. The concept here is more Bloom as the brain able to analyse humans and their motives while Jameson is more the physical prowess as well as able to adopt other identifies and accents at will. They’re very compelling competent characters as we see they both themselves are nursing old secrets that this case triggers. Interestingly Deakin has opted not to show this as their first case and instead we have a duo that over five years has already gained a lot of respect and contacts within the UK police. On the one hand this avoids the trap of creating another origin story, but it does mean we are coming in cold to the two. They seem instantly accepted and obeyed by everyone and when we do get the o share their secrets it seems strange that for five years, they’ve managed not to know much about each other. I really liked their dynamic and there is a touch of Holmes and Watson in their approach ; they clearly need each other to be successful but they are solving cases with a more psychological rather than forensic approach. It’s suitable their nemesis then seems evenly matched with team that can play to the strengths and weaknesses of both so that it feels an evenly matched battle across the UK.
The one issue I had was that possibly as this is looking to set up a new crime series there is perhaps too much being explained at once in order to set the foundations for the series. Certain facts get repeated several times to labour a point and sometimes it’s exposition heavy as secrets get told at suitable moments. Despite this Deakin weaves several plot lines together cleverly and often in surprising ways. When it is at top speed these issues can be easily forgiven as it feels right and there is another set-piece; rescue or revelation to uncover around the corner.
I think this feels a promising start to what I hope is an interesting crime series with two unusual lead investigators. Hopefully now that the world and central premise is created the future instalments can breathe a little and just focus on keeping the thriller flowing at its best and Deakin feels an author to keep an eye out for. If you fancy some unusual deduction and a nice dose of worrying about who you should trust, then this would be a fun winter read.
