Before She Disappeared

Before She Disappeared (2021) is a thriller/mystery by Lisa Gardner, the first of three novels featuring amateur detective Frankie Elkin. Frankie has dedicated her life to finding missing persons, especially those from marginalized communities whose cases have been forgotten. Before She Disappeared focuses on Frankie’s search for a Haitian teenager, Angelique Badeau, who vanished from her Boston high school nearly a year earlier. The novel explores the Invisibility and Marginalization of Women of Color, Gender Roles in Detective Fiction, and Guilt, Atonement, and Redemption. Gardner is a New York Times bestselling author of romance novels and detective thrillers. Gardner wrote her romance novels under the pseudonym Alicia Scott before turning to detective fiction.

This guide is based on the 2021 Penguin Random House Kindle edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This guide discusses themes of racism, addiction, sexual violence, and violence involving children that are present in the original text.

Plot Summary

Frankie Elkin is an amateur finder of lost persons and a survivor of alcohol addiction. She has spent the last nine years moving from one part of the country to another, looking for missing people whose cases have been abandoned by professional law enforcement.