Live to Tell ( D. D. Warren, Book 4) [Mass Market Paperback]

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Live to Tell ( D. D. Warren, Book 4) [Mass Market Paperback]

Product Details

Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (December 28, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0553591916
ISBN-13: 978-0553591910
Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Lisa Gardner
Price : $7.99

Customer Reviews

I've read almost all of Lisa Gardner's books (with my favorites being her Quincy and Rainie books). Lately, though, I was wondering if she had lost her mojo. I thought her last book, The Neighbor, was just OK. But I'm nothing if not loyal (until you write at least three awful books in a row), so I thought I'd give Gardner another try. Well, I'm glad I gave Gardner the benefit of the doubt because this book was one of her better ones.
There are a lot of books out there (including Gardner's books) that deal with twisted psyches and unimaginable violence. But what makes this book so disturbing is that it acknowledges that sometimes the twisted psyches belong to children. In her Author's Note, Gardner talks about friends of hers who had a troubled child and their struggles to find a way to save their son. Like Gardner, I tended to believe that troubled children were that way because of abuse and neglect. It is easier to understand how children who have been beaten, abused, tortured, or neglected become violent or primal. What isn't easy to understand is when a child with loving and attentive parents is violent. Isn't such behavior the result of nurture ... not nature? I think we all would prefer to believe this. But, as we learn throughout this book, that isn't always the case. Sometimes children are born without the psychological make-up they need to interact appropriately with others. Mental health professionals and facilities (like the locked-down pediatric psych ward described in the book) are working with these children to help them function in society.
This is Gardner's fourth D.D. Warren book, and I'm still unclear why D.D. is a recurring character as she doesn't seem particularly well-developed. Four books in and all I really know about her is that she is too involved with her job to have a life. Although Gardner attempts to give Warren a bit of romance in this book, I didn't find that storyline all that compelling, and I honestly don't give much thought to this being "A Detective D.D. Warren Novel." (A fact that was trumpeted across the front of my ARC.) To be honest, the characters of Danielle and Victoria were better developed than D.D.'s character. This doesn't really detract from the book, I guess. D.D. simply functions as the reader's way of getting information to solve the crime. Yet it seems a bit odd to create a detective and build books around her without giving her much of a personal life or back story.
My Final Recommendation
If you're a Lisa Gardner fan, I think this was one of her better books. The story is disturbing and harrowing and will take you to places you might not want to go. If you're a fan of disturbing, psychological mysteries, this would be an excellent choice for you. However, if these types of books aren't your cup of tea, stay away! This book is candid in its descriptions of violent children and makes you want to take a long hot shower afterward.

Live To Tell, the fourth novel by Lisa Gardner featuring Boston PD detective D. D. Warren, opens with Warren being called out to the scene of a horrific mass murder; an entire family is dead, the wife and three kids apparently killed by the husband before he shot himself in the head.
Something about the case doesn't feel quite right to Warren, but before she can identify what it is another family is killed, also in an apparent mass murder-suicide scenario. This time, however, the autopsy is conclusive: the husband was dead before the supposed self-inflicted gunshot was fired. Someone else killed these families.
Warren's quest to find out who really committed the brutal murders and how - if at all - they were connected leads her to a pediatric psych ward that specializes in mentally unbalanced children who've displayed violence toward themselves or others. Turns out both families had a child who had spent time there. Yet, in both cases the violent child was one of the murder victims, so what other connection could there be?
Perhaps it lies with Danielle Burton, one of the pediatric nurses at the facility, who herself is the lone survivor of a massacre that claimed her entire family... the 25th anniversary of which is only two days away. Or maybe it's new age healer Andrew Lightfoot, who had been advising at least one of the families on how to `treat' their child's violent behavioral issues, who holds the key. And how do divorced mother Victoria Oliver and her astonishingly violent eight-year-old son, Evan, fit into the mix?
As Warren figures out exactly how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, author Gardner takes the reader deep into a subject one does not see addressed with such frankness often in crime fiction: children with serious, violent mental disorders. Not "Damien from the Omen" or Children of The Corn kids, but real young people struggling with mental and chemical imbalances which cause them to act out in horrific ways.
It's sobering material that, mishandled, could come across as sensational or exploitative. But Gardner has obviously done her homework on the topic, and weaves interesting details about such children and how they are treated into what is an intensely gripping psychological thriller.