they are looking for a child who’s disappeared without a trace, and none of the “usual suspects” did it. In this book it turns out that no one is what he or she appears to be and the good guys can do bad things with good intentions. Kenzie and Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready. Amanda disappeared from her home three days before her aunt and uncle approached the detectives. Amanda’s mother, Helene, is a party “girl.” She loves to go out with men and her friends. She frequents bars, which is where she was when her daughter vanished. This was not the first time she had ever left Amanda home alone while she went out on the town. Helene is also into drugs. In fact, all evidence leads back to a man in prison, Cheese Olamon. Cheese is a drug-dealer that Helene had done some work for in the past. Seems $200,000 is missing from one of Helene’s buys she went on for Cheese. 200 grand missing would make you mad, right? Would it make Cheese mad enough to take Amanda rather than take it out on Helene? The title of the book comes from a warning Cheese gives Patrick, “Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone.” (p. 239) Reading it, it makes you think Cheese has Amanda and is toying with our protagonists. But as Cheese says himself a little later, “Whatever you think happened, you’re not even in the ballpark. You guys are so offtrack, you might as well be in mother*censored*ing Greenland. Okay?” (p. 241) And Cheese is right; all leads are drawing a dead-end. A year passes and Amanda stays gone, vanished, like she never existed.Another child is reported missing. Angie stayed obsessed with Amanda’s disappearance even though no new leads were given. She pored over their case files; desperately searching for something they missed. This new disappearance restores Angie and Patrick’s vigor for f...
