Gone Again

Doug Johnstone

Feb 2013 · Faber & Faber

About this eBook

'It's just to say that no-one has come to pick Nathan up from school, and we were wondering if there was a problem of some kind?'

As Mark Douglas photographs a pod of whales stranded in the waters off Edinburgh's Portobello Beach, he is called by his son's school: his wife, Lauren, hasn't turned up to collect their son. Calm at first, Mark collects Nathan and takes him home but as the hours slowly crawl by he increasingly starts to worry.
With brilliantly controlled reveals, we learn some of the painful secrets of the couple's shared past, not least that it isn't the first time Lauren has disappeared. And as Mark struggles to care for his son and shield him from the truth of what's going on, the police seem dangerously short of leads. That is, until a shocking discovery...

Ratings and reviews

Good, heartbreaking story with well-written characters that suffers from a tonal-shifting final act. The author has a great writing style. The main characters' inner dialogue is well written and has (or at least seems to have) some grounding to reality. The juxtapositions between the day-to-day routines of the the town and the people compared to what the character and his son are going through adds to the devastation of their experience. It also allows sympathy for one of the main characters' more abhorrent actions later in the story. The author makes certain we care enough about the main characters that when the inevitable dramatic arc has occurred we feel their heartbreak. The story goes from introspective drama to action thriller so fast though that it gives it's readers whiplash. A more subdued and melancholy ending would be more complimentary to the story. As it is the last act is written well enough but the action is a generic, Hollywood-inspired affair. What's worse, a lot of preceding story (like the investigation and some of the characters' history) ultimately end up being filler. It makes the overall story seem more derivative than it ought to. There is a piece of evidence early in the book that is so obvious it may as well have been written in bold. And the main character is written to "squeeze the bridge of his nose" and "rub his eyes with the palms of his hand" so frequently that it's difficult to tell if the author is emphasizing the character's nueroticism, or is simply overusing the descriptor. All that aside, it's a decent story that could have been great. It's inexpensive and short enough that it's worth the read.

Very nice thriller story.. Makes you keep thinking about the story even after you have closed your reading. But i feel there is little foolishness from Mark... How can he leave Ruth n Nathan alone in the house which had broken front door n one of the bad guy the blue bad guy had fled out? He could have dropped both of them at Ruths house.. That way they woula be more safe. I feel only this part of the story not real... But otherwise the book is very good.

dont know finished the sample bought the book, now its saying i'm finished and can't figure out how to go back to actually finish the book. will rerate it once i do get to

About the author

Doug Johnstone is the author of four novels, most recently Hit & Run, acclaimed by Ian Rankin as 'a great slice of noir' and by Irvine Welsh as 'a grisly parable for our times'. He is also a freelance journalist, a songwriter and musician, and has a PhD in nuclear physics. He lives in Edinburgh.