Live to Tell

isa Gardner has long been an ace practitioner of the psychological crime novel, and her skills don't desert her in her latest outing, Live To Tell.There are a host of thrillers vying for our attention at present, and the quality on offer ranges from the indifferent through the workmanlike to the genuinely inventive. Lisa Gardner has demonstrated in such books as The Other Daughter and The Perfect Husband that she’s more than capable of delivering the genuine article: thrillers which function on both the plotting and character levels, always couched in smart, well-honed prose. If Live To Tell isn’t quite vintage Gardner, it’s still an impressive piece of work – and better than most of her rivals could produce. A savage crime has rocked a working class neighbourhood of Boston; four members of a family have been brutally murdered. The father is lying in an intensive care unit, his survival in doubt. He is the principal suspect. Female police detective DD Warren, however, is not one to take things at face value. At the same time, Danielle Burton is about to have her life thrown into turmoil; a nurse whose life is at the service of her profession, she has tentatively recovered from a devastating family tragedy of decades before – and the investigation by Warren and her partner is about the throw Danielle’s life into chaos once again. There is one more angle to the triangle: the devotion of a mother, Victoria Oliver, to her disturbed son is about to be tested to the limit.