The Neighbor (Detective D. D. Warren Series #3)

The plot of The Neighbour is simply that a young, pretty woman disappears in the middle of the night, leaving her four year old daughter alone in a heavily fortified house. Her husband, secretive Mr Jason Jones, waits three hours before phoning the police, which immediately strikes lead female protagonist, D.D Warren, as odd. Warren (a sergeant) tries to decipher whether Sandra Jones left willingly or was kidnapped, was murdered or is being held hostage somewhere, all the while trying to extract information from the secretive and uncooperative husband claiming he simply wants what is best for their four year old daughter, Ree.
My main problem with the novel was that I only really cared about one character - Aiden Brewster, the twenty-three year old convicted of statutory rape four years previously. Out of all the characters, Aiden struck me as the most human, the most believable, and as the story progressed, I really started to feel for him. Here, Gardner raises the interesting point of whether it is helpful to the judicial system to label all sex offenders in the same way. The most poignant part in the book for me is where Brewster makes a comment where he claims that if he'd killed the underage girl he'd slept with, he'd be a lot better off. A jail sentence, sure, but then he could carry on with the rest of his life. Instead, he did the crime and will pay for it for the rest of his life. Hard, for a man of twenty three, who made one mistake. Much as liked Brewster, however, I felt he simply existed purely for Gardner to express her own opinions on the matter.
Lots happened in this novel, but nothing really happened. It seemed that for 2/3 of the book, D.D was trying to get a warrant for Jason Jones' computer and wishing she could 'get laid'. Jason Jones spent most of the book as a 2D character who loved his daughter, strolled about looking sexily moody whilst plotting away in his head and making dinner for the child. We got a glimpse into Sandra's life, which showed the different sides to the seemingly 'normal' twenty three year old teacher, but in reality, just tried to distract from the fact that D.D was sauntering around, not doing very much, except ringing her ex lover, Bobby Dodge. Despite only having two brief phone calls with D.D and never actually rocking up on scene, per se, he did provide some much needed humour, which is why I give this book three stars.
Over all, I felt this was a book that churned round and round, before spitting out a bizarre and frankly annoying ending. It was as though Gardner simply became bored with her own novel, and decided to scribble a quick ending, just so that she could finish and say 'haha, bet you didn't see that coming!'. Not her best work, though I'd recommend saving your cash and instead buying Say Goodbye (very dark) or one of the earlier novels.Show Less