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Ben Rehder

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Gone The Next (Roy Ballard Mysteries Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Ben Rehder (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 25,436 ratings

Book 1 of 9: Roy Ballard Mysteries

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Edgar Award finalist Ben Rehder's novels have made best-of-the-year lists in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Field & Stream.

GONE THE NEXT is the first novel in the Roy Ballard mystery series.

About GONE THE NEXT:

Meet Roy Ballard, freelance videographer with a knack for catching insurance cheats. He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts—the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report—and with his history, who can blame them?—it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.

Book 1 of 9

Roy Ballard Mysteries
Print length

286 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 15, 2012
File size

2322 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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“Go to Google,” I said. “Now click on that little gear thingy in the upper right. Okay, select ‘advanced search.’ Where it says ‘this exact wording or phrase,’ put ‘Erica Kerwick.’ Now, down lower, limit the search to Facebook dot com.”
Highlighted by 306 Kindle readers
More than three quarters of children who are abducted and murdered are dead within the first three hours.
Highlighted by 129 Kindle readers
Tracy Turner: six years old, blond hair, green eyes, three feet tall, forty-five pounds, wearing denim shorts and a pink shirt.
Highlighted by 119 Kindle readers

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009GPICOQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 15, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 15, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2322 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 286 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #262,596 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #685 in Kidnapping Crime Fiction
- #2,482 in Kidnapping Thrillers
- #22,841 in Mysteries (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 25,436 ratings

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About the author

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Ben Rehder

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Ben Rehder is an Edgar, Shamus, and Barry Award finalist, and he won the Texas Philosophical Society's Award of Merit in 2013.

Rehder's Blanco County comic mysteries have made best-of-the-year lists in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Field & Stream.

To receive an alert when the next Ben Rehder novel is released, sign up for Ben's occasional newsletter at www.benrehder.com.

The complete Ben Rehder bibliography includes:

Buck Fever

Bone Dry

Flat Crazy

Guilt Trip

Gun Shy

Holy Moly

The Chicken Hanger

The Driving Lesson

Gone The Next

Hog Heaven

Get Busy Dying

Stag Party

Bum Steer

If I Had A Nickel

Point Taken

Now You See Him

Last Laugh

A Tooth For A Tooth

Lefty Loosey

Shake And Bake

Free Ride

Better To Be Lucky

Boom Town

Another Man's Treasure

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

25,436 global ratings

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Josh L

Great story with great characters. This was an easy, enjoyable, and quick read.

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024

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I read this book over 2 days. I could not put it down. Great story with great characters. I am now going to buy the while series.

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2023

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While I wasn't crazy about Roy Ballard at the beginning of the book, he grew on me. Because this is the first in the series, the lack of character development doesn't really bother me. The plot and pacing are perfect and the tone is somewhat reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. I will definitely read more of this series.

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2024

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Great story and Roy Ballard and Mia Madison are very realistic characters. Plus a lot of humor interspersed in the story. Highly recommend this book !

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Leigh Holland

A Parent's Worst Nightmare

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2017

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Gone The Next (Roy Ballard Series Book One) by Ben Rehder, 286 pages, September 15 2012, Genre: Mystery/Suspense. Warning: May Contain Spoilers.

Review by Leigh Holland.

    Every year, about 200,000 children are abducted in America. Seventy-eight percent are abducted by the non-custodial parent. 58,000 children were abducted last year by people who were not family members. Of those, 40 percent were murdered last year. When a child goes missing, time is crucial to recovering the child safely. As a parent, I can attest that nothing in the world is more terrifying than the thought of losing your child. Jason Voorhees? No problem. Freddy Kruger? Piece of cake. Missing kid? Parents lose a tiny bit of our minds just thinking about the possibility. If you could see inside our souls at that moment, it’d look a lot like “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, a perpetual state of frozen terror.
    In this first installment of the Roy Ballard series, we follow a wise-cracking insurance fraud videographer (Roy) as he sets out to prove worker’s compensation claimants aren’t injured and are defrauding the insurance companies that provide him with lucrative pay for his services. Roy is divorced. He had a daughter from that marriage named Hannah. We’ve all done the same thing at some point- turned away for a minute. But when we look back, our child is there. Roy lost Hannah in the park one day when he turned away for a minute. The nightmare still haunts him, having shaped him. One day as he does routine surveillance on a claimant, he thinks for a moment he glimpses a famous recently missing girl standing in the man’s doorway. He hesitates, he’s unsure if the child was the missing girl. He reports it to the local police who ignore it as having no real merit. Roy continues to try to work with the police as he and his newly acquired partner Mia discover more evidence. But the police don’t want to waste time or resources unless there’s enough evidence to think it’s definite. Finding no help from the cops, Roy and Mia decide to do a little surveillance and investigating of their own. A child’s life hangs in the balance. Roy is worried time is running out to find the girl.
    I enjoyed Roy’s sarcastic one liners, his feelings as a defender of women and kids, and willingness to put himself at risk for others. When he does contemplate a wrong or stupid choice, he has Mia there to set him on the right path. Mia is supportive of Roy and considers him her best friend. She’s smart, good-looking, and outspoken. Roy and Mia make a good team. There was limited, appropriate cursing. I found no issues with the grammar or spelling. The plot had a couple of interesting twists. I had to keep reading to find out if they saved the little girl. Rehder does an excellent job of evoking every parent’s worst nightmare.
    I really enjoyed this book. It was a page turner for me. I look forward to reading more of Ben Rehder’s series in the future. I’d recommend this to Mystery lovers who enjoy a witty, unconventional private investigator.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Glynn Young

Good story of insurance fraud and kidnapping

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2021

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Roy Ballard is an insurance fraud videographer / investigator in Austin, Texas. He’s funny, flippant, cynical, and carries some criminal baggage of his own. Years back, he was arrested for assault (punching his old boss out for disrespectful comments about a woman). Right at the end of his probation, he was stopped for DWI, and the policeman discovered unprescribed pills in the car. So, Ballard has a record.

His usual jobs are investigating people who file fraudulent claims for workman’s compensation. Like the ones who claim a back injury but can hoist 80-pound bags of cement at Home Depot. He has sufficient work to support himself and then some.

He’s tracking and watching a restaurant dishwasher who supposedly hurt his wrist when he sees something, or someone, who shouldn’t be in the home. It’s a little girl, and Ballard is convinced she’s the little who was abducted less than a week ago. The case suddenly becomes personal; Ballard’s own daughter was abducted from the back seat of his car years before.

The police investigating the kidnapping write Ballard off because of his own past. He gets help from a good friend, Mia the bartender, whom he persuades to becomes a business partner in his fraud investigations. And Jessica, a server at the restaurant where the suspect works, helps, too.

“Gone the Next” is the first entry in the seven Roy Ballard mysteries by Ben Rehder, and it’s a gradually gripping mystery punctuated by Ballard’s wisecracks and general cynicism.

In addition to the Roy Ballard stories, Redhder has also written 13 novels in the Blanco County series, one of which, “Buck Fever,” was a finalist for the Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America. He’s also written two standalone novels, “The Chicken Hanger” and “The Driving Lesson.”

“Gone the Next” is a story that also provides factual background on child abductions and kidnappings. And Rehder does a great job of keeping the reader guessing about what happened to Ballard’s own child as well as the case he’s investigating.

5 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

This was a good book. Lots of humor and a!so excitement. It did get a little confusing towards the end of the story though.

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Annie56

fast-paced and exciting

Reviewed in Canada on August 9, 2023

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Great read, I am getting the next book in the series. No nasty details, but heartfelt and emotive all the same. Love Roy Ballard, funny and smart. Definitely a great series opener.

Cliente Amazon james.

Very good

Reviewed in Spain on July 12, 2021

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I gave this book 5 stars because it was tense a good sense of humour from Roy Ballard . Look forward to reading a other book by the same Author

Carol B

Perfect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 21, 2020

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Gone the Next is sad but humourous, Roy Ballard a videographer works insurance claims, but it starts with his daughter being abducted and the marriage falls apart understandably so, as his daughter was taken in his watch. His job at the moment is best described watching people that have put in an insurance claim because they can't work etc so he checks them out against fraudulent claims, and while on a stakeout he spots an approx 6yrs old little girl that was abducted or did he? is his mind playing tricks because sometimes his stakeout goes well beyond the call of duty and as he did not photograph her so he can't be certain, The little girl's mother an alcoholic has tried to dry out a few times and a husband who plays around so was poor little Tracey really abducted or taken to spite the mother. Roy also takes on a new partner female and they seem to work great together and she is quite bright at working as a detective would and is charming and witty although Roy has a lot of one-liners. The character are well defined the descriptions of the area Austin Texas good as I'm British will have to take the author's word that it's correct but bear in mind were listening/reading fiction. a story well put together praise for Ben Rehder for a great listen as he got a good narrator in Johnny Peppers.

Kindle Customer

A fast thriller. One of the best

Reviewed in India on December 24, 2019

Verified Purchase

Ben Rehfer can weave an astounding novel with an intricate plot. You just cannot put it down. Technically perfect! Eagerly waiting to read another from Ben Rehder.

Tri Summers

mal was anderes

Reviewed in Germany on March 11, 2017

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Eine sehr spannende Lektüre. Videograph Roy Ballard der Versichrungsbetrüger entlarven soll, gerät bei seiner Arbeit in einen Entführungsfall. Aufgrund seiner eigenen Vergangenheit hat er es mit der örtlichen Polizei sehr schwer und muss auf eigene Faust ermitteln. Nebenbei erhält man Einblicke in die Geschichte eines entführten Mädchens, was es damit auf sich hat soll hier nicht verraten werden. Man glaubt lange zu wissen wer das Kind hat und wer der Entführer ist und ich hatte schon mit einem langweiligen Ende gerechnet (wie es leider öfter der Fall ist), aber hier geht es am Ende actionreich zu und es ist spannend und überraschend bis zum Schluss.

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