Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Already Gone
    Already Gone
    Already Gone
    Audiobook7 hours

    Already Gone

    Written by John Rector

    Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    International Thriller Award Nominee

    Jake Reese is a writing teacher at an American university. He lives in a small brick Tudor close to campus with his art buyer wife, Diane. His life is quiet—even ordinary. And he likes it that way. But it wasn’t always quiet. In Jake’s distant past was a life on the streets, inflicting damage and suffering on more people than he can count. And now someone from his past, it seems, has come looking for him.

    A raw, gripping thriller about the price paid for past sins, John Rector’s third novel is a live wire that crackles with the intensity of a man who has nothing left to lose. When two men attack Jake in a parking lot and cut off his ring finger, he tries to dismiss it as an unlucky case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when events take a more sinister turn and Diane goes missing, Jake knows he can no longer hide from the truth. As he embarks on a mission to find his wife, he realizes his dark past is refusing to stay buried, and that his future is about to unfold in ways he could never have imagined.

    With taut and brooding prose, Rector paints a formidable portrait of a reformed man’s slow descent into a life he thought he had walked away from forever. As the intensity becomes almost unbearable, the pace quickens and the suspense applies an unrelenting, vicelike grip, as Already Gone hurtles toward its ultimate explosive climax.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 25, 2011
    ISBN9781455839940
    Already Gone
    Author

    John Rector

    John Rector is the bestselling author of the novels The Cold Kiss, The Grove, Already Gone, Out of the Black, and Ruthless. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and has won several awards, including the International Thriller Award for his novella, Lost Things. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

    More audiobooks from John Rector

    Related to Already Gone

    Related audiobooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How I Write

      Jan 2, 2020

      B.A. Paris is the author of four bestselling novels. Her debut, Behind Closed Doors , sold over a million copies, while her long-anticipated latest novel, The Dilemma , is set to be one of this year’s most chilling thrillers. I’m not a planner – I

      1 min read

    • Article

      Killer instinct

      Oct 24, 2019

      Killer instinct
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Minders

      Oct 7, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author John Marrs Publisher Del Rey John Marrs’s latest near future, high-concept techno-thriller isn’t so much a sequel to The One (DNA dating app has dark secret) and Passengers (autonomous ca

      1 min read

    • Article

      TV Pieces Of Her

      Mar 24, 2022

      TV Pieces Of Her
      1 min read

    • Article

      In 'The Less People Know About Us' A Mysterious Identity Theft Hits Close To Home

      Oct 20, 2019

      Axton Betz-Hamilton was 12 when her family's mail began disappearing. Her memoir details what follows and, when she discovers the culprit, the painful process of collecting the pieces of her past.

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Good Samaritan

      Dec 6, 2022

      It was hot that day, hot for the morning and hot for April and with a stickiness in the air that suggested something had to break. I was headed up the street to ask my neighbor Meech to give me a jump when I heard a scream come from the fourplex next

      10 min read

    • Article

      We Don't Talk About That Here

      Nov 4, 2021

      We Don't Talk About That Here
      4 min read

    • Article

      Back With A Vengeance

      Oct 22, 2020

      Back With A Vengeance
      3 min read

    • Article

      Prey

      Mar 10, 2024

      As I drove slowly toward the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that h

      41 min read

    • Article

      Prey

      May 10, 2021

      As I drove slowly towards the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that

      41 min read

    • Article

      Dirtnap

      Dec 15, 2019

      I was staying at Jean’s apartment in LA for two months to escape an especially dire Oregon winter and to test how much weight our relationship could bear. We had been conducting a long-distance romance for nearly a year then, back-and-forth visits an

      24 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      Curmudgeon across The Hall

      Dec 27, 2018

      Curmudgeon across The Hall
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Straw Hat

      Aug 2, 2018

      The Straw Hat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Parakeet

      May 29, 2020

      Parakeet
      11 min read

    • Article

      Performance

      Nov 10, 2022

      “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself. The floor inside the lab was polished, and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on

      18 min read

    • Article

      We Take Plastic

      Dec 1, 2022

      We Take Plastic
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Penalty

      Nov 5, 2020

      The Penalty
      8 min read

    • Article

      In a Silent Way

      Nov 25, 2023

      In a Silent Way
      3 min read

    • Article

      Evil In A Uniform

      Jun 1, 2023

      Walking from the pub, my date’s arm slung around my shoulders, I felt a flicker of happiness. It was December 2017, and I’d met David, then 43, on Tinder. A handsome police officer with a cracking sense of humour, I thought he was just what I needed

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Already Gone

    3.5/5

    44 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      John Rector has brought a very strong novel to the table and put it down in front of you. You should be picking up what he is putting down.Before picking up this novel, grab an industrial fan and place it in front of you facing away. When the novelized shit hits it, you will minimize the blow-back you experience.Within five pages of the opening, the ring finger of Jake Reese has been forcibly removed by a pressure instrument that is not intended to be used for surgery. Bolt cutters, normally tasked to leveraging solid metal into separate pieces, had no trouble going through the bone and flesh of Jake’s finger. Jake goes home to his wife, with his wallet intact, and his pride scuffed, and in a terrible amount of confused pain. What the heck just happened, why was it “Nothing personal” as the attacker stated while walking away.Rector’s “Already Gone” just gets better from there. I will not summarize anything further, in fear I could introduce spoilers.What I can advise is that I was kept rabidly interested, a captive audience from cover to cover. Mystery/Thrillers of this kind have a high risk of coming off as heavy handed; they risk a big opening and poor closing; they risk formulaic story lines. This book has surpassed all the risk and achieved all of the reward that a hard hitting story aspires to. It is solid beginning to end.I doubt that this book will become a best seller immediately, heck, there are so many books on the market that it could never achieve this status. I have high hopes though and I believe this is going to be a sleeper hit. Get in on the ground floor and read it early. Ensure that you are one of the cool people on the cutting edge of excellent fiction. After all, reading is a popularity game, right? You want to be cool…Highly suggested!--xpost RawBlurb.com
    • 3/5
      This is a poor mans Linwood Barclay attempt.Starts of quite good but then just gets silly and still has a few unanswered questions.Main character is Jake Reese he gets attacked, his wife goes missing/might be dead there are some dodgy gangsters after him,bent cop, diamonds,trusted friends escape to Mexico.
    • 4/5
      I stopped reading when I found this book to be too annoying, but then got back to it after finishing another book.A suspense, mystery tale. Jake, a young but reformed criminal, is working at a college teaching creative writing. He is attacked on the street by two men who sever one of his fingers. He has no idea why, but thinks it must be something from his past. Diane, his wife, takes off to Arizona soon after, he thinks she is spooked by what's happened and is going to leave him. But, she does return, only to die in a car crash, which Jake figures must have been set up by the people who attacked him. He tries to figure out what is going on, enlisting the help of a local organized crime figure who is loyal to him, having raised him after his father died. Jake goes to Arizona to see what his wife's state of mind was when she was there, through a psychic whose business card he found among his wife's possessions. He finds unexpected things.The story is fairly well constructed, but I found the character of Jake to be hard to believe. He is supposed to be a hot-head, acting on impulse and without common sense. But, most of the time when he is acting this way, he is too difficult to either like or understand. But, basically, I didn't find him believable.
    • 3/5
      It was very entertaining, but I had some issues:

      1. Predictable. I knew the wife wasn't dead.
      2. She lies to Jake the whole time, and he chooses her over the man who raised him. Please.
    • 3/5
      This is a page-turning thriller. Jake gets jumped at a local bar, leading to his life spinning more and more out of control. The characters are a rather flat and sometimes the story has a few too many twists, dead ends and unexplained circumstances. That didn't stop me turning page after page.
    • 4/5
      His childhood was less than ideal. His father was a criminal, dying in prison. Since one of his early memories is of his mother killing herself, he is left all alone when his father is arrested and, at the age of 12, goes to live with a friend of his father, a man named Gabby. Gabby is a gangster and owns a junkyard where it is said a lot more than just old cars are buried, if you get the idea. It is years later and Jake is living the quiet life he once dreamed of. He is married to Diane, an art buyer and working as a professor of literature at the local college. And then in one evening, his life begins to fall apart. Coming out of a local tavern where he was having a few drinks with some college colleagues, he is attacked by two heavily accented thugs as he goes to his car. They don't rob him, they don't steal his car...no, they cut off one of his fingers with a bolt cutter, his ring finger with his wedding ring still on it. Don't worry, they will send it back, the finger with the ring still on it, to him in a jar.For his part, Jake would just like to forget the whole thing and move on with his life. But when Jake sees the two men who attacked him outside his campus office and then Diane disappears, he knows that can't happen. He will be forced to turn for help to a man he both fears and hates...and trusts more than just about anyone to deal with something like this. His world as he knew it is over and Jake may have to become like the people he ran from years ago, to get his wife back.I have read one of Rector's previous two books, The Grove and enjoyed it a lot, so I was looking forward to his newest. And I was not disappointed!Let me start by saying that I just love the way John Rector writes. You won't find any flowery descriptions here, no rambling introspection. No, his writing is direct and clean, as sharp and spare as the story. This book is action and twists and turns from the that first "snip" to an ending that is fantastic...with just a note of uncertainty to keep us hanging.The only flaw and the only thing that would keep me from giving Already Gone five starts if I gave stars, is that, at times Jake is a bit too naive for his own good. Of course, if he were a bit more cynical, he might not have ever got into the situation that he did. So I will forgive it. This is a rather violent, action filled thriller that will take the reader on a great ride.
    • 4/5
      John Rector has brought a very strong novel to the table and put it down in front of you. You should be picking up what he is putting down.Before picking up this novel, grab an industrial fan and place it in front of you facing away. When the novelized shit hits it, you will minimize the blow-back you experience.Within five pages of the opening, the ring finger of Jake Reese has been forcibly removed by a pressure instrument that is not intended to be used for surgery. Bolt cutters, normally tasked to leveraging solid metal into separate pieces, had no trouble going through the bone and flesh of Jake’s finger. Jake goes home to his wife, with his wallet intact, and his pride scuffed, and in a terrible amount of confused pain. What the heck just happened, why was it “Nothing personal” as the attacker stated while walking away.Rector’s “Already Gone” just gets better from there. I will not summarize anything further, in fear I could introduce spoilers.What I can advise is that I was kept rabidly interested, a captive audience from cover to cover. Mystery/Thrillers of this kind have a high risk of coming off as heavy handed; they risk a big opening and poor closing; they risk formulaic story lines. This book has surpassed all the risk and achieved all of the reward that a hard hitting story aspires to. It is solid beginning to end.I doubt that this book will become a best seller immediately, heck, there are so many books on the market that it could never achieve this status. I have high hopes though and I believe this is going to be a sleeper hit. Get in on the ground floor and read it early. Ensure that you are one of the cool people on the cutting edge of excellent fiction. After all, reading is a popularity game, right? You want to be cool…Highly suggested!--xpost RawBlurb.com