Gone Baby Gone

　　★本書為電影封面版

　　再也沒有比孩子失蹤所造成的安靜更強的聲音。

　　這個介於兩呎半到三呎之間孩子的靜默，你會在臀部的高度感受到，聽到從地板上揚起，從角落、縫隙，以及床邊面無表情的娃娃臉上對你尖叫出聲。這種安靜和葬禮及守靈時不同。

　　死者的安靜帶著終了的意味；是一種你知道自己要去習慣的安靜。

　　但是，你不會想要去習慣失蹤孩子的安靜；

　　你拒絕接受，於是它對你高聲尖叫。

　　死者的安靜訴說著：再會。

　　失蹤孩子的安靜卻說：來找我。

　　人們沒在尋找她的每一秒鐘，她都有感受。

　　誰來讓那個女孩知道，她的生死仍然有人在意？

　　從小就被忽略著長大的四歲小女孩在深夜消失，恍神的母親十二小時之後才發現。既沒有勒贖電話也沒有事故現場，波士頓警方調動眾多人馬，仍然束手無策。

　　在孩子舅媽的懇切請求下，派崔克和安琪加入了搜查行動。經過抽絲剝繭的調查，終於將方向導向擄人勒贖事件。然而繳交贖款的夜裡，爆發了激烈的槍戰，對手不見蹤影，孩子更沒有贖回，最後一線希望也都破滅了。

　　但就在事情看似就要過去之際，派崔克發現或許他們一開始就搞錯了方向……

　　丹尼斯．勒翰對受虐兒童的悲憫和關注，以其特有的感性筆觸，寫下本系列最精采感人的一部故事。不論你以前是不是派崔克∕安琪的書迷，都不能錯過這部作品。

　　Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready, abducted from her bed on a warm, summer night. They meet her stoned-out, strangely apathetic mother, her loving aunt and uncle, the mother’s dangerous, drug-addled friends, and two cops who’ve found so many abused or dead children they may be too far over the edge to come back.

　　Despite enormous public attention, rabid news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation repeatedly hits a brick wall. Led into a world of drug dealers, child molesters, and merciless executioners, Patrick and Angie are soon forced to face not only the horrors adults can perpetrate on innocents but also their own conflicted feelings about what is best, and worst, when it comes to raising children. And as the Indian summer fades and the autumn chill deepens, Amanda McCready stays gone, banished so completely that she seems never to have existed.

　　Then another child disappears. . . .

　　Dennis Lehane takes you into a world of triple crosses, elaborate lies, and shrouded motives, where the villains may be more moral than the victims, the missing should possibly stay missing, and those who go looking for them may not come back alive.

　　Settle in and turn off the phone. From its haunting opening to its shocking climax, Gone, Baby, Gone is certain to be one of the most thrilling, talked-about suspense novels you read this year.

　　Dennis Lehane is the author of Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand, and A Drink Before the War which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel presented by the Private Eye Writers of America, and was also a Boston Globe best-seller. Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and still lives in the Boston area. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing.