Long Gone – Alafair Burke

Pub Date: 07-01-2011
HarperCollins

What would you do if you landed your dream job, only to walk in one morning and find the place cleared out and your new boss dead on the floor?  Alice Humphrey is offered the dream job of managing a new art gallery in Manhattan’s trendy Meatpacking District.  At first she feels like there must be a catch, but in the end the deal is too good to pass up, and she accepts.  Of course, there are some conditions, and Alice soon realizes that her new job will be slightly unconventional.  To start with the artist she has to give preference to will only communicate with her via email and SMS.  The other was that his work was controversial to put it mildly, and Alice had to feign interest and sell as much of his work as she could.  Then there was the fact that she would only ever really deal with Drew Campbell, the man who offered her the job, and he wasn’t technically speaking her real boss.  When she arrives at work one morning to find the gallery cleared out and Drew dead on the floor, she realizes that her friends were right, and that she must have been set up.

The story starts at a leisurely pace, but picks up speed once Alice finds herself in deep water.  The slow pace in the beginning can be attributed to the fact that there are so many characters, plots and subplots to establish, and speeding things up would confuse the reader.  It does, however, take a bit of patience, but you will be well rewarded for sticking with the slower start. 

Alice Humphrey is headstrong, independent, and just a little too eager to prove that she can live without her father’s money.   She soon realizes that her new job has more to do with her family than she realized, and in particular with one pivotal event in history that changed everything for them all.  There are skeletons aplenty in the Humphrey closet, and all is not as it seems.  There are so many twists and turns that, try as you might, you will still be left guessing right until the satisfying conclusion.

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Alafair Burke is the bestselling author of six novels, including 212, Angel’s Tip, and Dead Connection in the Ellie Hatcher series. A former prosecutor, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan. Long Gone is her first stand-alone thriller.