Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Release Date: March 12, 2024
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller / Suspense
Frankie Elkin is an expert at finding the missing persons that the rest of the world has forgotten, but even she couldn’t have anticipated this latest request—to locate the long-lost sister of a female serial killer facing execution in three weeks’ time.
She has called herself "death," but people called her the devil.
The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media’s chronicling of her tragic circumstances—the childhood spent with a violent father—no one could find sympathy for “the Beautiful Butcher” who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats.
Now, with only twenty-one days left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on the whereabouts of the sister who was kidnapped over a decade ago, and she needs Frankie’s help to find her. The Beautiful Butcher’s offer:
When was the last time your search ended with finding the living?
Unable to resist the chance for a rescue, Frankie takes on Pierson’s request. Twelve years ago, five-year-old Leilani went missing in Hawaii. The main suspect? Pierson’s tech mogul ex-boyfriend, Sanders MacManus. Now, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific—the site of MacManus’s latest vanity project—fresh evidence has appeared. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman’s life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp. Her challenge: A dozen strangers. Countless dangerous secrets. Zero means of calling for help. And then the storm rolls in…
She has called herself "death," but people called her the devil.
The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media’s chronicling of her tragic circumstances—the childhood spent with a violent father—no one could find sympathy for “the Beautiful Butcher” who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats.
Now, with only twenty-one days left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on the whereabouts of the sister who was kidnapped over a decade ago, and she needs Frankie’s help to find her. The Beautiful Butcher’s offer:
When was the last time your search ended with finding the living?
Unable to resist the chance for a rescue, Frankie takes on Pierson’s request. Twelve years ago, five-year-old Leilani went missing in Hawaii. The main suspect? Pierson’s tech mogul ex-boyfriend, Sanders MacManus. Now, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific—the site of MacManus’s latest vanity project—fresh evidence has appeared. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman’s life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp. Her challenge: A dozen strangers. Countless dangerous secrets. Zero means of calling for help. And then the storm rolls in…
Still See You Everywhere is the Third installment in author Lisa Gardner's Frankie Elkin series. This story is shades of Agatha Christie’s And then There Were None and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, in its descriptions of a Pacific atolls' beautiful yet terrifying island ecosystem. Frankie Elkin is the female version of Jack Reacher, except without the military experience. She's a recovering alcoholic. She has more regrets than personal belongings. She has no mailing address, or property to her name, or a real phone number.
She misses a detective in Boston. She mourns the loss of a man in Wyoming. All of her belongings can be stuffed into a suitcase, and she usually travels by bus. Yet, she has a curious ability to find missing people, especially the so called overlooked and marginalized. She's mostly successful, with 20 cases thus far, and that is why a lawyer (Victoria Twanow) for a death row inmate named Kaylee Pierson, aka The Beautiful Butcher, asks to meet with Frankie.
It seems as though Kaylee with face her mortality in 3 weeks by lethal injection, but she has a request for Frankie. Find my young sister Leilani who she lost contact with. Allegedly, a man named Sanders MacManus, a tech mogul kidnapped her sister 12 years ago and hasn't been seen since. Frankie is told that MacManus might be found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, hours from Hawaii which means that she will have to go undercover and hope nothing goes wrong.
So, Frankie soon finds herself being flown cross country to Los Angeles, then Hawaii, and lands on a place called Tetiaroa Atoll. Tetiaroa is filled with a variety of dangerous giant coconut crabs, ginormous wolf spiders, and maybe drug-related criminal activity or human trafficking after a sub-washed up onshore. To complicate matters further, someone is actively sabotaging the resort's operations, putting staff members' lives at risk, and to make things even more dangerous Frankie and the island's archaeologist find the dead body of a woman that went missing.
Frankie, who recently survived a brutal killer in Wyoming and likely has a version of Post Traumatic Stress, must think that bad luck follows her everywhere. Even though Frankie finds Leilani, she soon realizes that she has been used for something much bigger than she realized. There are wolves on Pomaikai heavily disguised in sheep’s clothing and we only see their fangs towards the end.
So, the reason for my rating is that nothing happens for a large chunk of this book. I also don't think this is the strongest book of the series. Frankie meets an interesting cast of characters and finds herself friends with Ann and Trudy who provide the meals while trying to avoid being eaten by crabs. The cast is as mysterious as the island they are expected to work on. Some are not who they say they are. There are those who think that Frankie is here for nefarious reasons. And, there is danger ahead on the horizon which will leave Frankie lucky to be alive.
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