Synopsis:
Kylie Milliard, the only detective on the police force in Hagen, North Dakota, returns in the second installment in author Danielle Girard’s Badlands Thriller series.
Far Gone is the story of two heroines with shattered pasts . . . and a town with blood on its hands.
When a couple with an infant daughter is shot in their home in cold blood, the sleepy little town of Hagen awakens with a jolt. After all, it’s usually such a peaceful place.
But Detective Milliard knows better.
Despite not handling a homicide investigation in years, Kylie is on the case. A drop of blood found at the scene initially promises to be the best evidence with which to track down the killer. But it only proves that someone witnessed the murders — and the results are shocking: the DNA reveals a familial match to a crime involving local nurse Lily Baker that occurred over a decade ago. The information stirs nightmares for Lily, who is forced to reckon anew with the most traumatic time period in her life.
Haunted by their pasts and hunting the killer, Kylie and Lily uncover hellish secrets and impossible truths that put both of their lives in jeopardy.
Review:
Girard wastes no time creating suspense. The story opens with fourteen-year-old Hannah Visser arriving at the home of Ben and Nadine Garza to babysit their infant daughter, Tiffany. Hannah is the daughter of Charles Visser, an emergency medicine physician at the local hospital. Her much-older brother, Chase, operates Visser Interiors, a high-end building supplies business, where Nadine is employed as an accountant. The Garzas have no idea that Hannah is impaired, having taken pills she obtained from a local drug dealer. Just as the Garzas are putting on their coats, getting ready to depart, the front door bursts open, and instinct drives Hannah to hide in the coat closet. From that vantage point, she watches in horror as both Ben and Nadine are shot. When she determines it is finally safe to emerge, she fears that if she calls the police or her father, she will be unable to explain what she witnessed and the fact that she is high will be revealed. She also worries that no one will believe her, and she might be accused of going on a drug-crazed murder spree. And what if the killer, whose voice is eerily familiar, is a police officer? Panicking, she grabs Nadine’s purse, locates the car key fob and, although she doesn’t really know how to drive and should not be attempting to operate a vehicle in her compromised state, takes off with Tiffany.
Meanwhile, twenty-nine-year-old Lily Baker, who survived being kidnapped and held hostage by Derek Hudson, is on duty at the hospital, along with Charles Visser. Her memories began returning to her as odd images and snippets of events. First, she recalled living with her aunt in Arizona and studying nursing. And then “over time the memories were just there.” Three and a half years after being freed, the only thing she can’t recall is the time she spent being held captive. The memories that return to her of that experience do so as nightmares that evolve into daytime terrors. Iver, her boyfriend, who was also featured prominently in White Out, theories that her mind “walled off” those memories to protect her from the trauma she experienced. She “divid[es] the people she encounter[s] by the subtle distinction of where they were when she had woken without her memory, in a stranger’s car, about to go off the side of an overpass,” detailed at the beginning of White Out. Iver is away, caring for his mother who has suffered a stroke, so Lily is alone at home when not working, and feeling particularly defenseless.
Meanwhile, Kylie is spending time with her best friend, Amber, and her young son, William. Kylie loves to babysit William, for which Amber rewards her with banana cream pie from the Hagen Diner. Kylie has now settled into her own place, after staying with Amber and William when she first arrived in Hagen. Even though it’s Sunday night, Kylie heads back to the station because, at thirty-four years of age, she has no social or romantic life. After all, the only nightlife in Hagen consists of hanging out in the bar or at the movie theater.
When Marjorie, the dispatcher, steps away from her desk for a moment, Kylie takes the 911 call from someone who sounds like a small child. The caller haltingly reports, “He just walked in the front door. I hid in the closet . . .” Kylie hands the receiver off to Marjorie, gets in her cruiser, and races to the Garza home. And Far Gone races at an unrelenting pace as Kylie and her fellow officers search for the killer and his motive.
The first order of business is finding out what happened to Tiffany, whose bassinet is empty when Kylie and her fellow officers reach the Garza home. Kylie leads the investigation, piecing together clues and doing her best to navigate Lily’s fragile emotional state when critical evidence leads back to her and the time that she was held hostage. Soon Hannah’s mother, Priscilla, arrives at the police station with Chase to report that her daughter, Hannah, is missing.
Girard tells the story from the alternating perspectives of Kylie, Lily, and Hannah. Kylie is single-mindedly determined to locate Tiffany and ensure her safety, and learn who killed the baby’s parents. Lily has to process the stunning news that Kylie finds herself having to deliver. Because of her own history, Kylie fully appreciates shocking it will be for vulnerable Lily to learn about what irrefutable evidence has revealed about her past.
But the most compelling aspect of the story is Hannah’s desperate journey to safety and determination to survive. She is convinced that if she can get to the family-owned cabin where she spent time with her father, she will be able to use the landline phone there to notify her father and enlist his help. As Hannah strikes out in Nadine’s vehicle, she has no idea how to navigate the world alone, but is savvy enough to stay off the main highways and keep her cell phone turned off. Still, she knows that a cold-blooded killer is looking for her in order to eliminate the only person who can testify to his heinous acts. Hannah has little money or food, only a small number of the pills upon which she is dependent remaining, and eventually has to ditch Nadine’s car. But she is clever and resilient, and Girard deftly ramps up the dramatic tension as Hannah nears the cabin . . . and the killer hones in on her location. Hannah is an endearing, believable character. Girard convincingly conveys Hannah’s story with compassion and tenderness, endearing her to readers who will find themselves unable to tear themselves away from Far Gone unless and until she is out of harm’s way.
Far Gone is replete with surprising plot developments that reveal family secrets, betrayals, and the nefarious motivation for the Garza killings. As noted, the action kicks into high gear at the outset and Girard never backs off, instead accelerating the story’s pace as shocking discoveries and a race to save the lives of some key characters ensue.
Unlike White Out, which focused largely on Kylie and her struggle to prove herself to her new colleagues, Far Gone revolves around Hannah and Lily, and the murders. One particularly moving subplot involves officer Carl Gilbert, who explains to Kylie that he dated Nadine for about a year. “She broke up with me for Ben.” Through Gilbert, with whom Kylie has a contentious history, Girard compellingly explores the challenges of remaining professional and appropriately detached while serving in a small town where everyone is acquainted — and the residents share consequential histories.
Far Gone is an intense and engrossing page-turner. Girard has again crafted an intriguing mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very end. It’s full of emotional complications and, at the center of it all, is a strong, but naive and very frightened young girl who has no idea when she shows up to babysit little Tiffany that her whole life is about to change in ways she could never imagine. It is a worthy follow-up to White Out, the smashing first volume in the series, and will leave readers clamoring for the next heart-pounding installment.
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