Live to Tell
by Lisa Gardner

Release Date: 22nd Jul 2010
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0105 5
RRP: £12.99

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More shrewd cop work from Gardner's D.D. Warren...

Building a thriller around paediatric mental illness (that’s psychotic children to the layman) is a little disturbing to say the least. We are not, as a nation (or species for that matter), comfortable with the concept that our innocent, young offspring are capable of extreme acts of violence; whether to themselves or to others. It is this innate discomfort that makes Live to Tell so utterly compelling; like the morbid curiosity that overcomes you at a traffic accident where you find yourself ogling until your neck nearly breaks: because you just have to look – you can’t help yourself.

D.D Warren is back. This time, the sex-starved and decidedly horny sergeant is faced with an incident of ‘family annihilation’: a father gone berserk and offed his entire family. The problem is he appears to have used multiple methods whilst in the throes of his deranged killing spree – a highly irregular statement of fact that makes D.D think twice. Before you know it, another family is wiped out and the case for family annihilation starts to fall apart. Despite differing demographical backgrounds, the mode of killing is the same – and more worryingly, they are connected – D.D just feels it in her gut. Her gut is also telling her that the entirely too gorgeous, too perfect and definitely too ‘woo woo’ spiritual healer, Andrew Lightfoot, is not all he’s cracked up to be; Danielle Burton, a distinctly messed up, absolutely involved somehow, paediatric nurse who works on an acute unit looking after children with extreme mental illnesses, is going through some kind of meltdown and ‘Gym Coach Greg’, also working at the unit and buffer than a well polished classic car, is certainly good for a suspect. With so many suspicious characters and bizarre coincidences, D.D’s radar is on perpetual red alert.

Gardner’s emphasis is entirely focused on the issue of child mental illness; a subject that has been controversial recently. For the sceptics, it seems improbable that a child of three can knowingly self-harm, or that a child who has never been subjected to abuse (physical or mental) would alternate between loving son and vicious abuser to a parent. And in this sense, the novel is extraordinary: inviting us to enter a closely guarded world full of contradictory practices, inconsistent responses to treatment and generally a volatile and unpredictable place. It is not immediately apparent why Danielle features so heavily – surely not the killer? But with true Gardner style, the answers are pulled out of a hat no one knew existed right at the end. And it is in spite of D.D's rampant randiness (it gets a little old real fast), Live to Tell still manages to be an enthralling tale, if only for the insight into paediatric mental illness and its care.

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