Reviewed by Brenda G.
A
fast-moving and powerful novel about the abuse of power and child
sex-trafficking, though thankfully without the gruesome details. Escaping a bad
marriage, Audra Kinney is driving west with her children when she is stopped by
the local sheriff. He claims to find marijuana in her trunk, which he searches
without permission. (No marijuana was there.) He calls another officer, female,
to take charge of the children and takes Audra to jail. When she asks about her
children, the sheriff remarks that she was alone and he saw no children. Her
nightmare experience grows. She is
accused of killing her children and leaving them in the desert.
Audra’s troubles are
receiving wide media coverage. Her
wealthy estranged husband appears. He besmirches her name and offers a reward.
Another man is watching, a Chinese-American man named Danny Lee whose wife had
a similar experience five years earlier. His daughter, who his wife said was
taken by police, was never seen again, and his wife killed herself shortly
afterward. Danny is in search of those
who took his daughter and is seeking revenge. Reporters, law officers, Audra,
her ex-husband, and Danny all converge on a tiny town in Arizona.
It would be lovely to
exist in a world in which events such as those depicted in this book did not
happen. A world in which a Dark Web used by sex traffickers and other
criminals did not exist. A world in which child pornography was not even an
ugly rumor. We do not live in that world. In our world, everything depicted in
this book is plausible. The author Haylen Beck, a pseudonym for Stuart Neville,
presents a dark and frightening tale and tells it well. It may also make us
wonder the next time we see and hear a similar tale in the media. What really happened, we may ask. I hope we
do ask.
Beck, Haylen. Here
and Gone : a novel. New York : Crown, 2017. 287 pages
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