The New York Times bestselling master of suspense is back!

When a night-time call to 911 from a secluded Wisconsin vacation house is cut short, off-duty 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 to 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.
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

Customer Rating:
Summary: Page-turning thrills
Comment: Essentially a heart-pounding chase, Deaver's stand-alone thriller pits a tough small-town Wisconsin deputy against a soulless professional killer and his cocky sidekick.

In trademark fashion, Deaver takes a simple crime, imagines all the things that can go wrong and keeps them coming so fast it's all you can do to remember to breathe. Then he slips in some personal complications, muddies the lines with back-story, casts doubt on everybody and juggles it all with multiple viewpoints and short, cliff-hanging chapters.

Deputy Brynn McKenzie leaves the family dinner scene - newish husband, troubled teenage son and convalescing mother - to follow up on an aborted 911 call from a remote lakeside vacation home. Expecting a false alarm, she stumbles into carnage and chaos.

The city couple who own the house are dead and the killers are still on scene, their getaway foiled by the couple's weekend visitor, a woman who winged one of the killers, then shot out the tires of their and her hosts' cars and ran off into the woods.

Why did she do this, thereby trapping herself with the killers? Well, she is something of a ditz, as Brynn soon discovers. In one of the book's less believable scenes, the panicked woman balks at trading her designer footwear for hiking boots as - without transportation, weapon, or phone - Brynn plots their getaway from men determined to leave no witnesses. But as the chase gets going the rescued woman thankfully grows a bit less whiny and a bit more resourceful. The ending is a maze of twists and turns, some the reader will guess, and some surprises.

Darkness, remote woods, a battle of wits and ruthlessness - just the thing to cozy up with on a cold evening. Deaver gives the plot a bit more heft with a shady union connection and a fixer set on joining the chase. Brynn's husband and bratty son are less compelling, but you got to have the human element, right?

Pure escapism, this tale requires some suspension of disbelief - but these days even the morning paper defies belief, so leave your worries behind and jump on for a wild and scary ride.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Bodies left Behind
Comment: This is a well written story with good dialogue; however, I found the plot somewhat implausible and quite distant from the previous Jeffrey Deaver books - all of which I have read and enjoyed. Perhaps his publisher might contact me?
vincent cobb

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Can Jeffery Deaver Really Ever Write a Bad Book?
Comment: Jeffery Deaver is my favorite author. There seems to be more bad reviews of this book than a typical Jeffery Deaver novel. Everybody has their opinion of a book and here is mine.

When I heard JD was writing another book in 2008, I was very excited. Also hearing it was a standalone was a bonus because I have enjoyed his past ones alot. After reading the synopsis, I was eager to read it to see how Brynn McKenzie's dilemma would turn out.

About 1/3 of the way into the book, I did think to myself that this book seems like a typical cat-n-mouse chase book and perhaps he did rush through it to finish another book in 2008. Yet always in the back of my mind with a JD book is "I know he is planning to set me up for some twists so where is this one going?". Well, the "master of twists" did accomplish his objective again as this book progressed. The challenging part of reading a JD book is figuring out the end which is what I enjoy most when reading his books. This book's suspense definitely grew as the book progressed and the ending is not what I was expecting.

Was it JD's best book....no. Was it another good Jeffery Deaver book...yes. It takes alot of thought, time, and effort for an author to write a book and the purpose is to entertain me as I am reading it. I definitely get my money's worth out of JD novels and will continue to buy them on Release Tuesday...no doubt!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A sit on the edge of your seat, page turner not to put down novel
Comment: I was shocked to read negative reviews on this book. But those readers are digging too deep into what is real and what is a novel. I "got it" that they shouldn't be able to see much at night and how do they find each other in the dark. But that's a novel---the author has that right to make his stories against what is real life. And that's what helps to make it exciting.
I thought this book was amazing----I lost a lot of sleep over it. I just couldn't put it down. The twists and turns were awesome----some were those I never saw coming. I doubt that anyone could have figured out the ending ahead of time.
No matter if you are smart enough to know that in real life, none of this could have happened---------if you take this book for what it is---a novel, fiction, made up by the writer-------then you'll love the action, the excitement, the cat and mouse game they play. Just sit back, have a mocha and enjoy.
I also agreed with some others that said it's one of if not THE best book they have read in a very long time.
Kudos to Deaver on this one-------that's my opinion anyway.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bleh - nothing special
Comment: I am a big fan of the Rhyme novels, and liked the recent Kathryn Dance book well enough. But, this one is a real departure from the Deaver books I usually love, and I was disappointed. Instead of a beat-the-clock-to-stop-a-killer-before-he-gets-the-next-victim approach, this book is mostly a long chase scene through the woods. There are some plot twists, and it was just interesting enough to keep me turning the pages. I give Deaver some credit for creating a strong, resourceful female protagonist, but for the most part the book was just marginally interesting. Mildly suspenseful, not at all thrilling. Sad that we won't get another Rhyme book until 2010.

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