num_pages: 422
description: Bestselling author Jennifer McMahon is back with a gut-wrenching mystery about an architect whose troubled mother has been found 25 years after being kidnapped-by a killer who is still on the loose.The summer of 1985 changed Reggie's life. Thirteen awkward and without a father she finds herself mixed up with her school's outcasts-Charlie the local detective's son and Tara a goth kid who has a mental hold over Reggie and harbors a dark secret. That same summer a serial killer called Neptune begins kidnapping women. He leaves their severed hands on the police department steps and five days later displays their bodies around town. Just when Reggie needs her mother Vera-an ex-model with many boyfriends and a thirst for gin-the most Vera's hand is found on the steps. But after five days there's no body and Neptune disappears.Now a successful architect who left her hometown behind after that horrific summer Reggie doesn't trust anyone and lives with few attachments. But when she gets a call from a homeless shelter saying that her mother has been found alive Reggie must confront the ghosts of her past and find Neptune before he kills again.With her signature style Jennifer McMahon portrays the dark side of adolescent friendship and introduces characters who haunt the imagination along with a disturbing web of secrets betrayals and murder.
language: English
title: The One I Left Behind
publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks