She Treads Softly: Gone in the Night

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Gone in the Night

Gone in the Night by Joanna Schaffhausen
8/12/25; 320 pages
St. Martin's Press
Annalisa Vega #5

Gone in the Night by Joanna Schaffhausen is a very highly recommended investigative mystery. This is the fifth novel featuring Annalisa Vega, now a private investigator but formerly a police detective. It can be easily be read and appreciated as a standalone novel.

Annalisa Vega is back with her ex and now current husband, Nick and is currently pregnant with their first child. He is still a detective with the police department and she's working as a PI, but business is slow.

Annalisa is surprised when her brother Alex asks her to visit him in prison because neither has forgiven the other for his role in the murder that she turned him in for. When she arrives it turns out that he wants her to look into the conviction of Joe Green. Green received a note in prison saying the eye witness in his case that lead to his conviction lied.

When Annalisa starts looking into the case. She knows that Nick was the officer who arrested Green. Upon investigating, she determines that the eyewitness did lie about what she saw the night of the murder and that there may be other similar murders. Some how they may be connected to a women’s shelter, Ruby's House.

The writing is excellent in this mystery. The main mystery is the Joe Green investigation which is full of complications and increasingly looks into the past along with the present. After determining the eye witness lied, the question is why, and that question increases the intrigue and suspense as more information is uncovered. There are a couple surprising twists in the investigation. Readers are provided with information in the opening chapter that show Green was innocent, so we know that Annalisa may be able to discover the truth. There is also a smaller, lighter, side investigation to help a woman, Effie Christo, find a missing ring her late husband, Theo, gave her. The only suspects are her close group of friends.

Annalisa and Nick are both fully realized characters with plenty of strengths and weaknesses fully displayed. Annalisa is intelligent and complex, and those traits are present throughout the novel. All of the other characters are also realistically portrayed. There is a tie-in to abuse of some characters. This is my favorite Annalise Vega novel to date.

Gone in the Night is a great choice for those who enjoy investigative mysteries. Thanks to St. Martin's press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.