Recent Afghan refugee and young mother Sabera Ahmadi was last seen exiting her place of work three weeks ago. The local police have yet to open a case, while her older, domineering husband seems unconcerned. At the insistence of Sabera’s closest friend, missing persons expert Frankie Elkin agrees to take up the search just in time for a video of Sabera to surface—showing her walking away from the scene of a brutal double murder.
Frankie quickly notes there’s much more to the Ahmadi family than meets the eye. The father Isaad is a brilliant mathematician, Sabera a gifted linguist, and their little girl Zahra has an uncanny ability to remember anything she sees. Which given everything that has happened during the girl’s short life, may be a terrible curse.
When Isaad also disappears under mysterious circumstances and an attempt is made on Zahra’s life, Frankie realizes she must crack the code of this family’s horrific past. Someone is coming for the Ahmadis. And violence is clearly an option.
When everything is on the line, how far would you go to protect the ones you love? Frankie is about to find out.
My thoughts: I’m a big fan of Lisa Gardner, and especially of the Frankie Elkin series. This was very good, lots of twists and turns, multiple (not always reliable) narrators, every time Frankie learns something new, it sends her off in a different direction. Her missing person, Sabera, is very complicated and rather than the wife and mother she appears to be, has a lot more going on.
Events in Afghanistan follow Sabera all the way to Tucson, Arizona. She and her husband and daughter are refugees but more than that, Sabera has secrets, dangerous secrets that some will do almost anything to learn. Those secrets put her and her family, her few friends, in terrible danger. The friend who requests Frankie’s help doesn’t know about any of it.
Frankie takes up her new short term job – feeding an iguana and some snakes (she’s not keen, but at least she bonds with the iguana), for a super rich tech nerd off to a convention, she’s also given a driver and cook/housekeeper who become part of her crack team of investigators. And she doesn’t piss off the local police too much, so she even gets some official help, especially as things turn violent and deadly.
Sabera’s story isn’t necessarily what I was expecting but it’s absolutely gripping, shocking and horrifying. Refugees are forced to live in terrible conditions in camps, forced to leave everything behind in order to try to find a safe harbour. Sabera thought she had found that, but trouble lurks around the corner, and Frankie (with a little help along the way) is the only one who can get reunite her with her daughter.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 