Book Review: Gone by Mo Hayder

Gone
By Mo Hayder
Bantam Press, 2010

Mo Hayder is back on form with a vengeance in Gone, her latest novel about detective Jack Caffery of the Bristol major crime investigation unit and police diver sergeant Flea Marley. After two promising but, for this reader, eventually disappointing outings for Caffery in his Bristol persona (Ritual and Skin), the author here delivers a cracking, classic police procedural novel that must be one of the best of its type I’ve read for a good while.

The story is about missing girls, a subject too distressing to contemplate, but here handled in a sensitive way. There are none of Hayder’s trademark obsessions with visceral or pathological details in this novel, leaving us with a jolly good detective story with a classic but clever plot. A man steals and drives away in a car from a city-centre parking garage, as Rose Bradley, a vicar’s wife, packs her food shopping in the boot. Her 13-year-old daughter is in the back seat. Caffery and his team, as well as all the regular police that can be spared, are soon out searching for the girl. Flea, a person given to watery premonitions, feels convinced that the old, buried canal is relevant, so takes her team of divers down the dangerous, dark tunnels to search along the sludge and sunken, abandoned barges – a remarkably atmospheric and convincingly described setting. Nothing is found, and the parents are increasingly desperate. 

Before too long, another girl is taken in a similar manner. The description of this abduction is highly suspenseful, as the reader is pretty sure it is going to happen sooner or later – but the circumstances are nevertheless a shock as Janice, the mother concerned, becomes distracted while Emily is waiting in the back seat of their car. We have been witnessing cracks appearing in Janice’s marriage before this crisis occurs, cracks that we feel pretty sure will give way to a full-blown break-up. Yet again, the direction taken by the author in this regard is a surprise.

Caffery and Flea pursue their separate off-the-books investigations. In Caffery’s case, this means a couple of encounters with his alter ego, the Walking Man, for possible enlightenment; and in Flea’s, this means leaving her somewhat demoralised team to the official search while she follows the hunches of her dreams (mainly involving her dead father) into the old canal again. But these somewhat mystical asides are just a fraction of the main action, which focuses on two main elements – the police investigation and the effect of the disappearances on the two families concerned. I’m not going to give away any more of the plot than I’ve already mentioned because it would spoil too much of the pleasure a reader must surely feel in the clever construction of layers that the author has provided. As I have mentioned, although the subject is a horrible one, the author never oversteps the mark into unnecessarily explicit or horrible description, yet she provides a blisteringly paced, tense thriller that you honestly won’t want to stop reading until you have finished it.

The novel is best appreciated if you have read the previous Jack Caffery novels, particularly the last two, although the reader of Gone is provided with a few brief updates of the necessary back-story, not least the misunderstanding that lies heavily between Flea and Caffery after the complicated fallout of the car accident of the previous two books.  It is far superior to these earlier novels, though, perhaps even touching on the excellence of the author’s, and Caffery’s, debut, Birdman. I very much hope this signifies the beginning  of a fresh burst of life for this series – not least because the author has left things nicely poised for Caffrey and Flea, connected on the astral plane, to stop ignoring each other in the real world and have a meaningful conversation, which could lead who knows where? I don’t, but it will certainly be somewhere exciting on the evidence of Gone.

My copy of this book was borrowed from the local library.

Read other reviews of this novel at: Euro Crime (Michelle Peckham); Tangled Web; Easy Mix; and Reviewing the Evidence.

Mo Hayder's unforgettable debut, Birdman (here reviewed by Nicci Gerrard in the Observer) and its sequel, The Treatment (reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence by Luke Croll) were about Jack Caffery, then a London detective, and his search for his brother.  The author then moved on to other books, the remarkably good Tokyo  and the remarkably bad Pig Island. Subsequently, she moved Jack Caffery to Bristol and to date has written three novels in a series about him and Flea Marley: Ritual, Skin and Gone. Author's website.

Comments

[Margot Kinberg]

Maxine - Superb review! I love a good classic police procedural with a dose of suspense like this one. I must read this, and actually, I feel badly that I am so woefully unfamiliar with Hadyer's work; time to remedy that.

[Dorte H]

Classic police procedural with a clever plot? This one sounds fairly irresistible.

[Jose Ignacio]

I spotted Mo Hayder recently but was not sure what to read first. This one looks just fine. Thanks for your review Maxine, excellent.

[Vanda Symon]

I liked Ritual, so I'll probably love this!

[[email protected]]

Glad to hear this is a good read and doesn't have Hayder's "obsession with visceral or pathological details." She is a good writer. However, I read only about half of "The Devil of Nanking" ("Tokyo"), as it was so incredibly brutal and gruesome that I couldn't read the entire book. I give Hayder a lot of credit for writing about the 1937 siege of Nanking by Japan, a topic which hasn't been written about much in fiction, textbooks (in the U.S., anyway) or the media. She helped to get information about this horror, including in the afterword. I hesitated to read other books by her, given the level of violence and gore, but this one sounds okay.

[Maxine]

I know just what you mean about Tokyo/DoN, Kathy, I was horrified but mesmerised by the historical part and the protag's childhood experiences. I was less entranced by the last quarter or so, I felt the modern-day plot fell to pieces. But it isn't a book you forget.

Thanks everyone for your comments - I nearly did not read this book at all because I didn't find the last one so good - but I am glad it was in the library and I picked it up!