So good! Fast paced and entertaining.

I definitely recommend reading the books in order (this is book 2) or you will lose out on a lot of the character development/nuances.

Thank you #netgalley and #stmartinspress #minotaur for the eARC.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for the copy of Long Gone. This is the second series I have read by Ms. Schaffhausen and I love it as much as I loved the Ellery Hathaway series!
Long Gone is the second book in the Annalisa Vega series and while I can usually read books out of order, I highly suggest you read the first book (Gone For Good) in the series because Long Gone really builds on many events in it. In fact, I reread it right before I read Long Gone and I loved it again.
This book is the perfect follow on! We learn more about Annalisa and her family, as well as her other relationships. The characters are well defined and believable and I loved seeing how they have fared since Long Gone. I am going to really love this series to see how the characters keep changing and growing!
There was so much going on in the story with many different layers, and I loved how they all came together.
I appreciate quality writing and this book delivers! I have never been disappointed in a book by Ms. Schaffhausen yet, and the writing is one of the reasons why.
If you’re looking for a new series you should start this one. This is a series I will read again and again.

When you’re a cop, you respect the Thin Blue Line, you stand by the side of your brothers and sisters in blue…..no matter what they do. Chicago detective Annalisa Vega is cut from different cloth, at the end of the last book she starred in, the cop she turned in wasn’t just dirty, he was her own father. Now fellow detective Leo Hammond has been murdered and Vega’s spidey sense tells her this was no random killing. She zeroes in on a sleazy car salesman whom Hammond believed killed his girlfriend, the same sleaze ball who’s been pursuing her best friend. With no allies on the force, and no one who takes her theories seriously, Vega is on her own. This is such a good series, Schaffhausen does an amazing job of capturing the very real Thin Blue Line effect

Last year, Joanna Schaffhausen introduced to a new heroine and a new series – Annalisa Vega, Chicago detective, honest, upright, and hardworking. Now in 2021, they’re back to bring us the next entry in the series – and if you love a mystery, Long Gone has got just the twisty intrigue for you.

Annalisa’s life was detonated in spectacular fashion at the end of the first book, and the fallout continues even as the shooting death of a veteran detective ignites a new case for our heroine and her partner and ex-husband, Nick Carelli. At first it appears the detective’s young second wife knows more than she’s telling, especially when she tells a wild story of an intruder in full diving gear shooting her husband – but it soon becomes apparent the dead man had plenty of secrets and people with reasons to want him dead. One thing’s for sure, and that’s that no-one – not even Detective Vega – could have predicted where this case would lead.

Joanna Schaffhausen has been on my radar for some time, and as much as I love her earlier books, she’s somehow getting better with every novel she releases. Long Gone has so much going on, but she makes it easy to follow multiple threads – it never gets messy or feels like too much. She’s also got a way of writing her characters that makes them feel so real; little moments of dialogue, or self-doubt, details that round a person out and cement them as an individual. Hers are not infallible investigative geniuses receiving implausible strokes of inspiration from nowhere – they’re hardworking, caring people putting in hard work and doing their best. The writing is easy to read and enjoyable, with a flow that made it feel like a much shorter book than it was.

As with Joanna Schaffhausen’s other novels, Long Gone is part of a series, though it could also be read as a standalone, and there’s no wrong place to jump into her novels. If you’re after a thriller that will deliver on the suspense, give you characters to cheer on, and wrap it all up with a thoroughly satisfying conclusion – look no further.