Long Gone

By: Alafair Burke

Narrated by: Tamara Marston

After a layoff and months of struggling, Alice Humphrey finally lands her dream job managing a new art gallery in Manhattan’s trendy Meatpacking District.

According to Drew Campbell, the well-suited corporate representative who hires her, the gallery is a passion project for its anonymous, wealthy, and eccentric owner. Drew assures Alice that the owner will be hands off, allowing her to run the gallery on her own. Her friends think it sounds too good to be true, but Alice sees a perfect opportunity to make a name for herself beyond the shadow of her famous father, an award-winning and controversial film maker.

Everything is perfect until the morning Alice arrives at work to find the gallery gone - the space stripped bare as if it had never existed - and Drew Campbell’s dead body on the floor. Overnight, Alice’s dream job has vanished, and she finds herself at the center of police attention with nothing to prove her innocence. The phone number Drew gave her links back to a disposable phone.

The artist whose work she displayed doesn’t seem to exist. And the dead man she claims is Drew has been identified as someone else.

When police discover ties between the gallery and a missing girl, Alice knows she’s been set up. Now she has to prove it - a dangerous search for answers that will entangle her in a dark, high-tech criminal conspiracy and force her to unearth long-hidden secrets involving her own family... secrets that could cost Alice her life.

©2011 Original material Alafair Burke (P)2011 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

“[Burke] makes the city her own. She takes New York with a knowing and confident hand, folding its teeming streets into character and plot in a story that is never less than gripping.” (Michael Connelly)

“Tremendous novel, and Alafair Burke is one of the finest young crime writers working today.” (Dennis Lehane, New York Times best-selling author of Moonlight Mile)

Great Plot

There are so many twists and turns in this plot. I'm usually good at guessing where we're headed and at no time did I have the answers. Great read.
It is a good book, however I can do without the cursing.

Very long with predictable ending

This book took me so long to listen to. It was such a complicated plot and honestly I was just bored with it. I suspected many of the twists before they even came. I may give this author another read- it was possibly just the topic that didn’t keep my interest. I am a huge fan of Mary Higgins Clark and it felt like Burke was just creating an even more complicated version of that style.
In the end there were still a couple (resolved) situations that left me unsatisfied.

Hard to enjoy

Get out your pen and paper for this read. You will need those to take notes to keep everything straight. This book had way too many characters and several story lines that you kept wondering when are they gonna connect or how do they even make sense. Any book that you had to stop and think about what you’re reading, who belongs with who, and how each person plays a part in the story is just not enjoyable. The author tried too hard to be all mysterious and it ruined it. Couldn’t wait for to be over.

Great story

It was long but loved the story. Great twists and turns.I would recommend this read.

Very slow to develop, but!

The story was so slow to develop that I was tempted to “book-mark” and move on to another; however since Alafair has never failed to deliver I persisted and was richly rewarded. Give it a try I highly recommend it.

Part mystery, thriller, police procedural

The book was an easy listen. There was purposeful misdirection which worked out in the end. It was a little disjointed but all came together. I liked it.

Like Mary Higgins Clark

Let me preface this by saying that this was my first Alafair Burke novel. I didn't know what to expect.

I was disappointed with Audible (or the publisher) that the "book details" gave away so much of the story. It seemed that I must have listened to over an hour of the book before I heard anything new!

My first impression as I listened was that it was set up the way Mary Higgins Clark frequently sets up her novels: several different threads begin and eventually come together as the story is woven into cloth. I didn't know at the time that Alafair Burke has written a series with Ms. Clark. I also didn't know that she is the daughter of James Lee Burke (whose beautifully-written series I found depressing, so I gave up after the first one).

That being said, I enjoyed this story, and liked the twists and turns. I empathized with Alice's bewilderment, and appreciated the use of a Facebook account as a plot device.

I find that the "separate threads" method is difficult when I am listening to a book, and means that I end up going back a lot and listening again when I realize the narrator is no longer talking about the same person or place. But I did get used to it and realized I had to pay closer attention.

Worth an attentive listen!

Lovelovelove this story!

The story is brilliantly, and the narrator is stellar. I’m a new fan of this author!

compelling story

one of my new favorite authors. Alafair Burke. started with Under Suspicion series with Mary Higgins Clarke. great characters, mulicomplex story.

I liked it!

Guess I'm out of step here, lots of so-so reviews, but I liked this book -- a lot. Okay, I'm a die-hard Alafair Burke fan, love them all, and yes, I do like the Ellie Hatcher and Samantha Kincaid series better, but this was a fine listen, in every respect.

I'm also surprised by the negative comparisons to the author's father, James Lee Burke. I've liked reading several of the elder Burke's books, but have to confess, I can't stand listening to them. The narrator of the Robichaeux books is always the same man, Will Patton, and I absolutely cannot deal with that dragging, somnolent voice, which sounds like he's either extremely elderly, drunk or just waking up. Alafair's books, on the other hand, have very good narrators -- no problems whatsoever.

I thought this book had an intriguing plot -- the sort of thing you could see yourself getting into, more or less. Alice had been unemployed for a year, and even though she had wealthy parents, she really needed a job. So when this dream job -- supposedly -- was offered to her, she took it. I can see myself doing the same thing. From there? All kinds of things happen -- most of them not so good.

Good book! Try it yourself and see!