The Moment She Was Gone » (Abridged)

Ed McBain, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award, was also the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. His books have sold more than one hundred million copies, ranging from the more than fifty titles in the 87th Precinct series (including the Edgar Award-nominated Money, Money, Money) to the bestselling novels written under his own name, Evan Hunter — including The Blackboard Jungle (now in a 50th anniversary edition from Pocket Books) and Criminal Conversation. Fiddlers, his final 87th Precinct novel, was recently published in hardcover. Writing as both Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, he broke new ground with Candyland, a novel in two parts. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. He died in 2005.

Visit www.edmcbain.com.

It's two o'clock in the morning when Andrew Gulliver gets a phone call from his mother, who tells him his twin sister, Annie, is gone. This is not the first time. Ever since she was sixteen, she's been taking off without notice to places as far distant as Papua New Guinea, then returning unexpectedly, only to disappear yet another time, again and again and again.

But this time is different.

Last month, Annie got into serious trouble in Sicily and was briefly held in a mental hospital, where an Italian doctor diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Andrew's divorced mother refuses to accept this diagnosis. Andrew himself just isn't sure. But during the course of a desperate twelve hours in New York City, he and the Gulliver family piece together the past and cope with the present in a journey of revelation and self-discovery. Recognizing the truth at last, Andrew can only hope to find his beloved sister before she harms herself or someone else.

The Moment She Was Gone, a...

Publishers Weekly

Hunter tracks a woman's slow descent into the depths of schizophrenia through the eyes of her twin brother in his latest, a melodramatic novel that offers some suspense at the start before it slides into a series of mawkish, overwrought scenes in which Hunter picks apart the dynamic of an ill-fated, dysfunctional Jewish family. Andrew Gulliver is the first-person narrator, a New York teacher who learns that his flighty, erratic sister, Annie, has disappeared, leaving her family with no clue as to her destination or whereabouts. The initial momentum of that conceit quickly dissipates when Hunter embarks on a long, extended flashback in which he outlines Annie's previous disappearances. Most of her escapades are at least familiar, with the most obvious clich s being a trip to India to study with a yogi as well as a debacle in a Georgia bar with a libidinous redneck who turns out to be a cop. The adventure that leads to real trouble is a visit to Sicily, where Annie encounters several amorous locals and ends up being hospitalized after a nervous breakdown as a questionable drug treatment accelerates her schizophrenic tendencies. Hunter wears his heart on his sleeve in his compassionate, heartfelt prose, but the lengthy passages in which he dissects the family take the air out of the climax when Annie finally turns up. The book has a few effective sequences, particularly when Annie attacks Andrew's wife with a hammer and Andrew turns to his divorced spouse years later for support when Annie disappears. Those moments aside, this represents a drop-off in quality from Hunter's usually crisp, illuminating prose, and longtime readers and fans are likely to be disappointed. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.