Sunday Suspense: Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner

 

Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons,

   

   Live To Tell is written by Lisa Gardner, and is the fourth book in her bestselling Detective D.D. Warren series. It is published by Penguin Random House under their Bantam imprint. In it, we are introduced to Danielle Burton, a psychiatric nurse who is the sole survivor of her family's massacre at the hands of her father decades prior. She works day to day trying to do her best to help the child who is a patient in the locked ward that she works in; her own twisted past haunts her daily. 

  Across town Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren is on a date that seems to be going well. But she is interrupted by her precinct as she is called to a horrific crime scene: an entire family has been butchered, and the lead suspect is the father, currently fighting for his life at a local hospital after a botched attempted suicide. But the scene reads against murder-suicide for D.D., and she is determined to find out the real truth behind the murders. Before she can settle into the deaths of the Harrington family, another homicide call comes in with another family murdered in almost the same style, with the father appearing to be the perpetrator. Two family massacres in such a short time span cannot be a coincidence. And with the anniversary of the Burton family killings fast approaching, Danielle is on edge. 

    Using the narratives of several characters, Gardner sucked me into this gritty crime novel like a whirlpool that threatened to hold me under. The mystery was laid out in a way that she cleverly left clues that made me suspect many of the characters. It was a fast-paced read that I could not put down. I was extremely satisfied with the ending of the novel, which was a shocker. Of particular amusement to me was Danielle Burton and Detective Warren’s banter, who were evenly matched. Their determination to solve the crimes gave me more insight into these characters, but also involved some great moments that made me smile.  We are also introduced to Alex Wilson in this novel. Detective Warren's future husband and father of her child is just as charismatic and lovable in this novel as he is in the later ones.

   I read Live to Tell in part with the voice work of four amazingly talented narrators, Rachel Gray, Anne Marie Lee, Rebecca Lowman, and Kirsten Potter. I could not think of four better narrators for this novel. They worked well together to bring the story to life. One narration is truly unsettling, but I will leave that to you to hear.

  Live to Tell is a tense novel filled with a blend of mystery, suspense, horror, and drama. It takes an all-to-real subject and shines a floodlight on it. Lisa Gardner has written a solid suspense tale with a lot of twists and turns. I gave Live to Tell five out of five stars.   

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