Once you begin HERE AND GONE, you will stay up all night reading it to find out what happens next and how it ends. That is what happened to me. I knew what I was getting into when I started this debut novel by Haylen Beck because I was already familiar with his excellent work. How so? Haylen Beck is a pseudonym for Stuart Neville, the critically acclaimed crime fiction author whose books set in northern Ireland are objects of dark and violent beauty. Neville, for all of his Irish blood, is a major fan of American mysteries and thrillers, and has decided to write and publish novels set in the United States under Haylen Beck (see if you can guess how the name was created). If HERE AND GONE is an example of what we can expect from Beck, a weekly offering would not be too frequent. I loved every word.

"...an adrenaline-charged read... You will never forget HERE AND GONE, particularly if you have small children or grandchildren, and you may want to keep them under lock and key until they reach the age of 35 or so."

HERE AND GONE is a long nightmare, a living one experienced by Audra Kinney. When we meet Audra, she is driving through Arizona, taking the local and state roads as part of a long journey that began in New York and hopefully will end in San Diego. She and her children, Sean and Louise, are on the run from her abusive husband, who we learn about in dribs and drabs as we race through the book. The journey is more or less smooth until they stop at a convenience store in the posterior end of nowhere when the family becomes the subject of a traffic stop by a local sheriff.

Audra’s life becomes a nightmare in just a few minutes, as she is placed under arrest and her children are separated from her. When she is detained in a prison cell, things get much worse, spiraling so far out of control that she begins to doubt her own sanity. Not even 24 hours after being arrested, Audra finds herself accused of murdering her children and vilified in the national media, even as the FBI joins the search for them.

Meanwhile, a very dangerous man in San Francisco --- a former gangbanger named Danny Lee --- sees the event playing out on the news. He finds Audra’s circumstances to be extremely familiar, and wonders if possibly her ordeal might provide him with the answers to bring him the closure he needs to ultimately achieve the peace that has been denied to him. The reader learns early on what is occurring, and why, and the resultant ticking clock gets louder and louder as the story progresses. Audra and Danny form an initially uneasy alliance as they attempt to locate her children, an all-but-impossible task given the array of forces against them and the improbability of locating Sean and Louise in the seemingly endless expansions of Arizona, even as the time when they may be swallowed up forever approaches.

Beck demonstrates the same savvy knowledge of the cracks and crannies of the backlands and badlands of the United States as he does of Belfast in the novels published under the Neville name. It’s an adrenaline-charged read, for sure, one that could never be too long, and full of memorable characters --- from an older woman running a guest house to a recluse who is introduced all too briefly in the final quarter of the book. In between, there are Audra, Danny, Sean and Louise, and those monsters (not too strong a word for that lot) who would do them harm.

You will never forget HERE AND GONE, particularly if you have small children or grandchildren, and you may want to keep them under lock and key until they reach the age of 35 or so. Strongly recommended, but get a good nap first.