The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel

Book Description:

Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008: Nothing is as it seems in The Bodies Left Behind, Jeffrey Deaver’s quintessential can’t-put-it-down thriller about an off-duty cop who investigates an aborted 911 call from a secluded vacation home and ends up on the run. From the opening scene (that’ll keep even the bravest of you at home with the doors locked and the shades drawn), Deaver delivers a clever page-turner that reads like one of his tightly plotted and fast-paced short stories (fans should check out Twisted). Endlessly surprising (there is more than one jaw-dropping plot twist) and supremely gripping (two hours after cracking this stand-alone thriller, I came up for air and took a moment to shake the cramp out of my fingers), The Bodies Left Behind is one of the most entertaining thrillers of the year. --Daphne Durham


When a night-time call to 911 from a secluded Wisconsin vacation house is cut short, offduty deputy Brynn McKenzie leaves her husband and son at the dinner table and drives up to Lake Mondac to investigate. Was it a misdial or an aborted crime report?

Brynn stumbles onto a scene of true horror and narrowly escapes from two professional criminals. She and a terrified visitor to the weekend house, Michelle, flee into the woods in a race for their lives. As different as night and day, and stripped of modern-day resources, Brynn, a tough deputy with a difficult past, and Michelle, a pampered city girl, must overcome their natural reluctance to trust each other and learn to use their wits and courage to survive the relentless pursuit. The deputy’s disappearance spurs both her troubled son and her new husband into action, while the incident sets in motion Brynn’s loyal fellow deputies and elements from Milwaukee’s underside. These various forces race along inexorably toward the novel’s gritty and stunning conclusion.

The Bodies Left Behind is an epic cat-and-mouse chase, told nearly in real-time, and is filled with Deaver’s patented twists and turns, where nothing is what it seems, and death lingers just around the next curve on a deserted path deep in the midnight forest.