Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Neighbor: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel (D.D. Warren Book 3)

Top positive review

Great psychological thriller

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 20, 2022

Sandra Jones is a teacher as well as a wife and a mother to a four year old daughter. So it is truly a mystery when her husband comes home from his journalism job in the middle of the night to find his daughter sleeping and his wife gone. Vanished. Her purse and cell phone still on the counter in the kitchen.
This was a fascinating whodunit because it is narrated by the various "players" themselves, carrying the action that way, instead of through the detectives.
This is the third in the series, and I'm on to read the next. It seems like each book is better than the last. So of course, this one-- five stars

Top critical review

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LucyMay

Interesting Read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 2, 2016

I purchased this book for $5.99 back on September 5, 2010 but only recently got around to reading it. I don't know what compelled me to purchase the book back then, but I'm glad I did. The author, Lisa Gardner, combines writing in 3rd person and 1st person in this book. Switching between points of view can be dangerous unless you really are an adept writer. Lisa Gardner pulled it off in spades. Since the writing style of this book isn't what we're used to reading, I went to the reviews on Amazon to see what other readers thought. I always like to focus on the worst reviews first, since I feel like the lower reviews are more real and contain more information. There were indeed comments about the switching of points of view - all negative. I guess most readers don't enjoy the jumping back and forth. And I will admit that it is hard to follow, but once again, I found the writing style interesting and well done. The basis for most of the low reviews was, however, the readers' profound dislike for the lead character, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. I wholeheartedly agree with the comments made in the one and two star reviews . . . the lead character is extremely unlikeable and to be totally honest - she's a b***h. I dislike her immensely and therefore won't be reading any more "D.D. Warren" books. Plus, she's dumb at her job and adds absolutely nothing to the plot. Poor main character, Lisa Gardner!!!! The book could easily have been a five star book had the lead character contributed something. The plot is centered around two tortured souls who are married and have a child called Ree (???) - the child's name is Clarissa Jane Jones. The father, "Mr. McDreamy" Jason Jones, is a wimpy, quiet, introverted man that just sits around watching his daughter, while the case builds against him. Even so, I liked Jason and felt sorry for him throughout the book. There's a hint given towards the end as to why Jason's behavior is so abnormal, but it is never clearly stated. I still wonder what happened to Jason Jones as a child.
His beautiful wife, Sandy goes missing creating the main plot thread. Sandy is another tortured soul who makes stupid decisions but her backstory is revealed towards the end of the book, allowing you to justify her behavior (sort of). Just about the time I got tired to not knowing what the hell happened with everyone, the author wraps things up rather quickly. Other reviews didn't like the quick wrap-up, but I was OK with it since I was utterly exhausted with the slow moving plot. The saving grace for me was the interesting writing style of the author, which I think Lisa Gardner pull off quite well. Three stars for this book that could be a five star effort. (P.S. The grammar was OK in this book except in the areas written in italics . . . periods were continually omitted. The book needs better editing.)

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From the United States

justdeb1107

Not My Favorite in Series

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2022

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I am reading the D. D. Warren books and have loved most of them. In this one, there were no likable characters - including D. D. Well, maybe the little girl and her cat. It ends there. I also figured out the main bad guy right away. So, yeh, this one was, “meh.” Can’t win them all and I thought book 2 in the series was fabulous. Read that one if you haven’t yet. It’s a five star, IMO.

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Fatima Peter

Convoluted story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2020

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I usually like Gardner's books. However, this one left me mad at the ineptness of the cops, specially DD Warren. Why can’t the cops ever consider Sandra left on her own or she was molested by her father. For me, a fool can see that.
There is no clear story line and none of the characters are likable except for Ree. Jason is too mysterious and cocky, Sandra too flirty and the cops too inept and jumping to conclusion.
DD Warren seemed like jumping to conclusions and did not connect the dots until it was explained to her and they couldn’t even make the 13 year old talk!
There are a lot of characters; the father who killed the mother who supposedly abused the daughter and later molested his teen daughter, the abused teenage daughter disappears in the middle of the night with no care for consequences, the abducted and abused boy who is now a man and the husband and the main suspect, the precocious 4 year old who doesn’t reveal the night time visitor, the teenage computer wizard who saves the family from disaster, the state forensic investigator in love with the missing woman, yada, yada ...

6 people found this helpful

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Linda

Stupid cops

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 14, 2010

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I had high hopes for this book because it was high on the list of Kindle bestselling mysteries. I ordered the paperback version and looked forward to an engrossing missing person/possible murder story. Instead, I was disappointed, as the lead cop, D.D. Warren, who is supposed to be this pretty, tough-talking, seen-it-all Boston homicide detective, and her fellow cops, proved to be a bunch of ineffective nitwits who never figured out what happened on their own (several murders had to happen in the end before they caught one of the culprits) and who kept jumping arbitrarily between 3 or 4 main suspects as being the guiliy party without any insight from clues or proper detective work . How dumb are those cops that couldn't do a background check on Jason and find out his previous identity? Most real agencies could probably do that in a few hours. And Jason - granted he has a good reason to be a basket case because of his past, but you'd think he'd be trying to help the police more in finding his wife instead of almost purposefully acting like he had something to do with her disappearance. And the title of the book "The Neighbor" is so misleading. I agreed with another reader who said the book would've been better off without the neighbor - he was a silly red-herring. Why invest that much time in his backstory and first person narrations? And the bizarre thing the wife did to keep her family together - a normal person would have gone to the cops in the first place. Also, the whole premise was she thought her husband was up to something highly illegal, but she left him time and again with their child. The characters in this book didn't make a lot of sense.

7 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

The Neighbor

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 27, 2021

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This isn't as good a mystery as the other Lisa Gardener books I've read. This one was poorly conceived, very contrived, a lot of it didn't make sense in terms of the story she'd set up, I figured a lot of it out before the end , and a lot of didn't make much sense, this isn't one of her better books.

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KRW

Annoying

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 18, 2014

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If you read the other one- and two-star reviews, you won't have to read what I've written. I agree with all of them. Too much was held back from the reader for the sake of creating false suspense. Real people would never act the way these characters do, given the situation. And the ending is ridiculous, slapped together as if the author is saying, "Ah, finally I can tell you what I've been keeping from telling you all along for the sake of creating a story." The ending is inorganic, doesn't flow from the story in a natural way, and the characters' motives are utterly unbelievable. I won't be reading any other D.D. Warren stories or anything else by Lisa Gardner. I tried one, and as far as I'm concerned, I've tried them all.

4 people found this helpful

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Christina R.

Not Gardner's Best By Far

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 9, 2009

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I have read all of Lisa Gardner's books and liked them all, but this is her worst as far as I am concerned. The ending was trite and almost too good to be true. But what I disliked the most was the fact that there were no likeable characters in this book. They were all distasteful and long before I got to the ending I really did not care who was guilty. Skip this one and buy one of Ms. gardner's other novels.

I gave it two stars for all of the valuable info about computer hardrives and the material that remains on them that is given in this book. That is info that every person who uses a computer should know.

10 people found this helpful

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Diane

Drags along

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2020

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Unfortunately not one of her better stories. Kind of drags along.

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rudydot

a so-what-who-cares book, to me

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 15, 2013

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Hey! I said it before and will say it again on this one: a strictly "so-what-who cares" book as for as I am concerned. Just more clutter when there are so many FINE BOOKS out there to read!! I mean, why bother with this one!?

4 people found this helpful

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