I have read all the books previously written by Ed James and have loved them especially the DI Fenchurch series. Sadly on this occasion I could not get into this book. Sorry

A kidnapping of a baby starts off this book and it continues from the perspective of several narraters. Who is behind the kidnapping and why. Two rich brothers at odds throughout their lives. One the father of the baby and one is one of several suspects. Enter a ruthless Russian mafia leader with a strong desire for dealings with one brother and a unforgivable betrayal by the other brother..
I enjoyed this book with it's many twists and turns not giving you some of the answers until close to the end and then the danger becomes even worse.
Even with the multiple narrators you don't get lost or mixed up and you will really feel for some of the characters. I give the book a four it's got some, in my opinion, unbelievable events but still a great story. Thank you NetGalley, Ed James and Bookouture for allowing me to read this ARC. I recommend this book.

A family drama that’s shows the destructive nature of jealousy. From the first sentence I was lost, the real world disappeared and I was hooked. Great read, highly recommend

DNFed at 30% in. It just didn't hold my interest. It's not very believable and worse, I didn't care about the outcome or the characters, not even baby Ky.

I have to say I found this a bit slow in the beginning. I even stopped reading it and came back to after reading something else but when I gave it a chance and got a few chapters in I started to like it and in the end I did enjoy it. Ended up being about much more than a simple kidnapping! Good characters and a good storyline. #netgalley #reviewer

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I didn't realize this was part of a series, but it was written well enough that it could be read as a standalone. I expected a bit more of a thriller with twists and turns and it didn't really deliver there. But overall, it was a good story, engaging, and well written. I didn't feel it dragged on or anything and was a good way to pass some time.

A 6 week old baby is kidnapped from his wealthy family: can FBI agent Max Carter return the boy safely? What is the motive for the abduction: the intricate family relationships or a dodgy financial deal?
I'll be completely honest: Gone In Seconds book took me a while to get into. There are lots of links to the previous book in the series which I have not read and I felt this detracted from the plot of this novel. If you have read the previous book, then I'm sure the continuation of the plotline would be much more enjoyable.
About a third of the way in, I was hooked as the abduction plot takes on a personal edge. The characters seemed to develop especially Carter and the kidnapper (no spoilers from me!) The sympathy of the reader is inspired by these two characters which gives the plot a greater depth than appeared at the start of the book.
I liked Carter's character: he is determined and dedicated. But he also has issues with his father who abducted him as a child which had led him into this FBI specialty.
The action is fast paced and delivered in short chapters to move the plot along quickly. The revelations are chilling and shocking, made even more so by the personal connections between the characters. The ending was extremely dramatic with the resolution of the kidnappping as well as tying up loose ends from book one. Meanwhile, the epilogue sets up Carter's next dilemma...
Overall this was an enjoyable crime thriller but I would recommend reading the first in the series before reading Gone In Seconds.

Free ARC from Net Galley

I am not a series guy, format books bore me. I have not read the previous Max novel but I liked this one good enough.

Some real good twist and turns and then the "foreign influence" makes an appearance which is always good.

Pretty good.

What starts out as a snatched baby case gradually evolves into so much more. The pasts of the abductor and the parents and their families are exposed and motives start to explain themselves.
It isn't often I will say this, and especially not during lockdown because I have really struggled with reading, but this is truly a page-turner. Many is the evening I ended up reading just one more chapter etc etc etc.
The pacing is superb, letting the story and character interactions and conflicts unfold organically. The reader is kept guessing almost throughout the whole book - some suspicions will be true, but so many will be surprises.
Excellently written crime fiction which develops well beyond the abduction of a baby.

EXCERPT: The house gates clatter open and a car powers through. Her car, that giant Nissan SUV. Huge and brown, lit up like the fourth of July. Jennifer Bartlett gets out into the cold night. She looks tiny next to her massive car, the engine still running. Dark hair, green dress, steely grey eyes. She wraps a fur coat around her bare arms, her heels clicking as she walks up the drive.

Selfish, entitled, egotistical, vain, spiteful...

Makes my skin crawl just seeing her there.

The house door opens before she gets there and a woman steps out. Their nanny. Jeans, sneakers, same striped shirt I'm wearing. Perfect.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Landon and Jennifer Bartlett have everything - money, influence and a picture-perfect family. But it means nothing when their lives are torn apart the day someone breaks into their plush mansion and takes their newborn child right from his cot.

FBI Agent Max Carter investigates child abduction cases. He has a reputation for working all hours to find every missing child on his watch - after all, he was once one himself. When he visits the Bartletts’ sprawling home in an exclusive estate in the suburbs of Seattle, he’s immediately suspicious of Landon Bartlett and his brother Sam.

As Carter delves deeper into the lives of the brothers, he finds a web of dubious business deals and lies that could cost the Bartletts their entire family fortune. And it’s clear they will do anything to keep their secrets, but would they withhold vital information that could lead him to baby Ky’s kidnapper?

As Carter begins a cat-and-mouse game with the kidnapper, he receives some startling news from home, which stops him in his tracks. And when a young woman is spotted boarding a bus out of town with a baby fitting Ky’s description, he must decide whether to risk everything to find the missing child or save his own family.

MY THOUGHTS: I have previously read a couple of Ed James' books and enjoyed them. Gone in Seconds contained a lot of facets that I don't enjoy, and avoid like the plague. Organised crime for one. And I really didn't enjoy this, though I think it is more me and my personal preferences than Ed James writing. I am more a fan of domestic drama/psychological thrillers than full on action/thrillers which, really, is what this is. Although there is not a lot in the publicity blurb that indicates this.

And this could have been an absolutely brilliant domestic drama without the organised crime/Russian Mafia/killers for hire aspects. It will have a huge appeal to the action thriller audience, but it wasn't for me.

😑😑.5

#GoneinSeconds #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Ed James writes crime-fiction novels. His Scott Cullen series features a young Edinburgh Detective investigating crimes from the bottom rung of the career ladder he’s desperate to climb. Set four hundred miles south on the gritty streets of East London, his DI Fenchurch series features a detective with little to lose. His next series takes place thousands of miles west, with FBI Special Agent Max Carter investigating child abductions in Seattle and the US Pacific Northwest.

Formerly an IT project manager, Ed began writing on planes, trains and automobiles to fill his weekly commute to London. He now writes full-time and lives in the Scottish Borders, with his girlfriend and a menagerie of rescued animals.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Bookouture via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Gone in Seconds by Ed James for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

Gone in Seconds as apparently the 2nd book in the Max Carter series - i havent read the first and i didnt have any problems getting into this one.
For some reason i was expecting more a thriller - but it was a total mixture of so many genres - spy, family, crime, action. Baby Ky is stolen from his home and Landon and Jennifer are terrified as to what has happened to him. However this is not just your every day abduction - we meet several dodgy characters along the way - and the abducter is introduced to you very soon into the novel - though reasons for the abduction are not so clear.
I give this book a 3/5 because it didnt grab me and i found myself skim reading in places sadly - however i did want to get to the end to find out what happens!

This is the first for me by this author. I didn't realize that this is the 2 book in a series. for the most part this is a stand alone, but I feel I would have understood a few things better if I had read the first book. This story has quite a few twist and turns. It seem as if more than one story was going on and sometimes it was hard to follow. I really didn't understand the ending at all. It kept me interested, but frustrated me at time with the switching as to who was telling the story.

A girl kidnaps a baby while his parents are at a gala for the opening of their cancer research center, a cop chases a known child kidnapper, a man is standing trial for murder. All of this is going on within the first chapter and at first it's hard to keep up. Things do eventually make sense and all tie together, but the reader has to really pay attention for awhile.

There was no really big suspenseful moments, but a very disfunctional family, full of lies and deceipt. If you like the whole family drama thing, this book is for you, the surprises do keep coming. I personally like a book to be more mysterious than this one.

I found myself not liking most of the characters, they were all so selfish. The only person I really felt any compassion for was the kidnapper herself. Thank you for another book NetGalley.

*** This is book 2 in the Detective Max Carter series, I advise you to read the first before jumping in. ***

Ed James is a new author to me and I didn’t realise that this was the 2nd book in the series, a mistake on my behalf.

The cover and blurb is what drew me to this book, it ticks all the boxes that i usually look for in a book. The feel of the story was great, intense and had me flicking those pages thick and fast. There are a lot of things going on within the story so keep those eyes peeled, I did get a tad confused with the amount of characters and obviously I was missing back story from the previous book (again, my mistake) and I feel that I would have given this book more golden apples if I had read the first book.

I feel that this series is going to be explosive and I intend on following Max Carter into the next book (after catching up).

Gone in Seconds by Ed James is a recommended suspense novel and the second in the FBI Agent Max Carter series.

Wealthy couple and new philanthropists Landon and Jennifer Bartlett are out at a benefit when their five week old son, Ky, is stolen from his crib. The couple is beside themselves, so perhaps the fight between Landon and his brother Chase is understandable, or is it? FBI Agent Max Carter investigates child abduction cases and he is called in to find young Ky, but the case seems to have more angles than is obvious at the start. There may be some kind of tie to the Russian mafia, and could the brother's dubious business deals somehow be connected to the kidnapping.

Readers will know right from the start that a young woman named Kaitlyn has kidnapped Ky, although we don't know why. She seems to care for the baby, but she seemingly has little planned as far as her escape beyond the kidnapping. We don't know the why until later in the novel and then it makes some sense. She also has some mysterious helper assisting her in her escape.

The story will hold your attention, especially as you will want to know why the baby was taken and also some explanation for everything that is going on in the novel. There is a lot more going on than just a kidnapping. This is also a definite second in a series and James does little to assist a new reader jumping into the series at book two. Jumping into book two will mean you are missing background information and helpful character development. Additionally, Max isn't a very likeable character and I'm thinking book one would likely add some more depth and humanity to his character.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bookouture.
The review will be posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for this ARC.

I love Ed James books and after reading the previous book looked forward to this one. It didn’t disappoint, although I thought it started off quite slowly. The story is told through the different characters and the style of writing is very different to the author’s UK books which I’m getting more used to. The book was engaging and had my attention from beginning to end, it was fast paced, full of suspense and twists and raced to a thrilling end. The main character is growing on me, and the unexpected return of a character from the previous book added to my enjoyment when reading. I thought the plot was cleverly thought out by the author that had me hooked and I look forward to the next book.

This book started slow and honestly had a hard time drawing me in. Once the story picked up, it was a very fast, suspenseful read. I didn't connect to any of the characters but the writing and plot worked for me so I think that's why I stuck this book out.

I haven't read anything else by ED James but I'd like to see if I like that a litter better.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for my advanced ebook copy.

This is the second book in the Max Carter series by Ed James, and set in Seattle. Max is an FBI agent specializing in investigating child abductions, while dealing with his own family issues. Having been kidnapped himself when he was a child, Max is obsessed with helping parents recover their abducted children, often to his own detriment. The story is intricate, yet easy to follow, written from the perspectives of the various characters. There is no stark black & white, but lots of shades of gray in the characters and their motives. The setting is rich with local flavor. In fact, I was really surprised to learn that the author lives in Scotland, yet he has pictured the Pacific Northwest perfectly! I have lived here for over 30 years and couldn't really find any errors. A great read! Can't wait to read the next in the series!

DNF at 30%. The writing is too distracting. While I want to know the ending, it wasn’t worth it to me to keep going.

Disappointing read with staccato macho language set in Seattle but has the voice of UK lingo. Not entertaining nor interesting as the writing was so distracting. Lovely cover and interesting blurb drew me in but the story is hard to follow and uncomfortable to read. .