Who was the First Daughter?

This is the second book by Lisa Gardner that I have read. The first was "The Perfect Husband," which wasn't too bad for a first effort. Despite a similar sounding title, this book has nothing to do with the first one and is no attempt at a series. Both are suspense-type novels.

In this one Melanie Stokes is a 29-year-old single woman, living with her wealthy parents, and doing nothing much but volunteering at charity events. Suddenly, Larry Digger, an annoying reporter, crashes her charity party. He has come to tell her that there are some secrets in her past that she doesn't know about. Melanie IS aware that she was adopted at the age of nine by her parents, but she never knew who her natural parents were, or what happened in the first nine years of her life.

Larry Digger claims that she is actually the daughter of an executed serial killer Russell Lee Holmes. Holmes killed six young children, one of which was Meagan Stokes, the Stokes family's first daughter. Further, he insinuates that a deal was cut between her adopted father and Holmes to see that she got a good home, as if to replace their daughter that was killed. Melanie is shocked by the news and has a difficult time believing anything bad of her family. But David Riggs, an FBI agent who is undercover at the party, hears the conversation and can well believe it. After all, he is already investigating doctor stokes for insurance fraud. Is the insurance fraud case linked to Melanie's past? It sure seems to be when an assassin shoots Larry Digger before he can tell everything he knows. It is up to Melanie and David to find out the truth.

I finished the book mainly out of curiosity. Just whose daughter is she? Who is her real mother? Without that question, I don't think the book would have kept me reading.

First of all, I don't really enjoy mysteries in which all the information is known by the characters, it just takes one to drag it out of them. This is the case with this story. The mystery of Melanie's parentage and who hired the assassin are known by her mother, father, brother, and godfather. This type of story generally means, no action, no real suspense, just a lot of talking and assumptions and rehashing the same material over and over. This can only carry the plot so far.

Related to that is that there are very few characters in the book. That means very few red herrings and not enough suspects. The plot needs complications to remain suspenseful. Because of this and the previous "flaw" alot of dead air was created.

The plot was not very fast but at least was fairly balanced between narrative and dialogue. Most of the narrative was needed to explain a character's state of mind, so it wasn't excessively verbose. The story is set in Boston, which is starting to get overworked, especially for stories with a medical connection. It seems like most medical thrillers are set in Boston.

I did like the characters. The author did do a good job making the characters seem three-dimensional and real. You feel Melanie's anguish as she comes to grips with finding out secrets about her family. David Riggs was once a promising baseball player but was crippled by an unusual case of arthritis. He is too disabled even for the FBI to assign him to criminal cases, so he is involved in white collar fraud and other types of cases. You can feel both his physical pain caused by his hurting back, but also his feeling of impotence that he failed his father and cannot even perform a desk job. Harper Stokes is your typical arrogant doctor, performing unnecessary procedures. Gardner has provided the obligatory "one you love to hate."

The book does have its merits with an interesting cover-up and a puzzle to resolve. But it just takes too long getting there and it just isn't very mysterious. I know this conflicts with the other reviewers; maybe I just expected too much and so I'm disappointed. Though there was enough diversion that I didn't guess the ending, the ending wasn't surprising either. That is due to the lack of red herrings. I hope the next book by this author is a bit better in these areas.