Book Review: Right Behind You by Lisa Gardner



Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons!

    My reading for the year of 2018 has been above and beyond my expectations. I finished my Goodreads Challenge early. And I am still adding books to my own Xepherus Reads Reading Challenge. But one constant aspect of my reading has been my love for thrillers and mysteries. Lisa Gardner has provided many amazing books to fuel this passion for who-done-its, and of course I had to read another of her books.   



   Right Behind You is the seventh book in Lisa Gardner's popular FBI Profiler series. It is published by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The story is the result of a Facebook Poll that Gardner issued on her page: Who should star in my next book? The response was overwhelming, and her FBI Profilers were once again on the hunt.

  This story begins eight years ago when Telly Ray Nash took a baseball bat to his father's head in order to save his little sister, Sharlah, from being murdered. With a mother and father lying dead in the family double-wide trailer, years of abuse had finally come to an end. But many years later the siblings would realize that their fight to stay alive had only begun.

  Right Behind You takes place several years after the events of Say Goodbye. We return to Oregon and the lives of FBI Profilers Pierce Quincy and his wife, Rainie Connor. Their foster daughter is Sharlah Nash, who has grown up to be a very capable and caring teenager. Although she is still coping with the fractured memories of her parents' death, Sharlah is determined to be the best person she can. With her trusty retired police dog, Luka, Sharlah attends a program at the local library that utilizes animals to help shy children read. After three years of love from her foster parents, she is set to be adopted by them. Meanwhile her brother, Telly, has found a foster home with loving parents, as well. Frank and Sandra Duvall are couple looking to help older kids learn the basics of being on their own before they age-out of the foster system. Since Telly is seventeen, he is one year away. All seems to right with the world.

  Then one morning, several miles away, at the EZ Gas Station, a customer and a store clerk are gunned down in cold blood. And at the end of the station's video feed stands Telly Ray Nash, gun in hand, as he shoots the surveillance camera. Sheriff Shelly Atkins and her team begin to investigate the killings. She calls in Pierce Quincy to aid her in profiling why Nash is seemingly on a killing spree. But the case gets deadlier when the Duvalls are also found murdered. With Nash's sister in their care, Pierce and Rainie begin to take steps to protect their daughter from her homicidal brother. Could Telly Ray Nash be targeting his sister next? What secrets did the Duvalls have to hide? Pierce Quincy and Rainie Connor will soon find out that danger can lurk right behind you.

  This novel will a thrilling page-turner with a sharp and biting narrative that engulfed our favorite Profilers in one of their most dangerous cases. I was treated to a nerve -wracking tale that had me once again sacrificing sleep to continue reading. Lisa Gardner has a love for her characters that shown brightly in this novel. She wanted Pierce and Rainie happy, and she made sure to choose a foster child for them that is very much like them in many ways. Sharlah Nash was very smart and fearless. She had absorbed three years of listening to police procedure, and she used this to her advantage when confronting her brother. Right Behind You was the kind of book that loved to mess with me. Just when I thought I had figured the mystery out, Gardner presented another aspect that deepened the thrills.

  I read this in part with the duel performances of actors, Luke Daniels (4th Manand Teri Schnaubelt. Daniels handled Pierce and Telly's narratives. While Schaubelt handled Rainie, Sharlah, and Shelly's parts of the story. I enjoyed both their voices, and felt that they added a extra dimension to the characters. I would choose books with their narrations again due to they way they both made the story come to life. Excellent work.

  Right Behind you was a four star read for me. Lisa Gardner never fails to make my reading exciting. This is a great Summer who-done-it that will you will love to bring to the beach.   

    Have fun reading this week. Let me know in the comments below what you are reading.

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  Because there is always time to read,
   Xepherus3 





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All written content and top logo (c) Copyright 2018 by Thomas Bahr II

Book cover is (c) Copyright 2018 by the publisher

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