Those Who Are Gone: A Novel

Raquel Laing #2

by Laurie R. King

Cold-case detective Raquel Laing faces new threats and long-buried secrets in this gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing had what might politely be termed a “difficult childhood,” until she was taken in by a loving family at the age of nine. She still lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, an online investigator for organizations all over the world. 

Trouble arrives with an all-too-common case for Inspector  the homicide of a drug dealer in a deserted corner of San Francisco. But the everyday rapidly spirals into complications—just as a simple search into the family’s ancestry is throwing Dee into her own world of turmoil.

Raquel’s case blows up far too close to home, thanks in part to the illicit shortcuts she took in the investigation, and while her unique skills are too valuable for the SFPD to suspend her entirely, she is removed from Homicide and put onto the Cold Case Unit.

On the one hand, Cold Case lets her work with her friend and mentor, Al Hawkin. On the other, it leaves her free to look at some disturbing facts about her past—and at the devastating news that Dee has uncovered in her own search for the truth.

Cold cases heat up, the distant past intrudes, and two sisters begin to suspect that they are tied together in ways they never imagined—ways that threaten attention from a powerful and vicious international cartel.

A case proving that those who are gone remain tied to those who are very much still here.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Procedural

336 pages, Hardcover

Published September 8, 2026

About the author

Edgar-winning mystery writer Laurie R. King writes series and standalone novels. Her official forum is
THE LRK VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB here on Goodreads--please join us for book-discussing fun.

King's 2018 novel, Island of the Mad, sees Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes travel from London's Bedlam to the glitter of Venice's Lido,where Young Things and the friends of Cole Porter pass Mussolini's Blackshirts in the streets. The Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series follows a brilliant young woman who becomes the student, then partner, of the great detective. [click here for an excerpt of the first in the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice] The Stuyvesant and Grey series (Touchstone; The Bones of Paris) takes place in Europe between the Wars. The Kate Martinelli series follows an SFPD detective's cases on a female Rembrandt, a holy fool, and more. [Click for an excerpt of A Grave Talent]

King lives in northern California, which serves as backdrop for some of her books.

Please note that Laurie checks her Goodreads inbox intermittently, so it may take some time to receive a reply. A quicker response may be possible via email to info@laurierking.com.

Reviews

[PamG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those Who Are Gone by Laurie R. King is the second book in the Raquel Laing mystery, crime thriller, and police procedural series. After an on-the-job injury, Raquel as been working part-time as a cold-case detective in the San Francisco police department. As the story starts, she is getting ready to go back to work part-time in homicide and part-time as a cold-case detective. However, there is soon a flash-back to last year which lasts several chapters. As past and present collide, several cases heat up and provide threats to many of those involved.

Raquel is an expert in micro-expression analysis and can read the subtleties of human responses that others may miss. Despite this, she isn’t very good with human emotion and tends to be aloof. She likes working alone or with her mentor and friend, cold case detective Al Hawkin. She lives with her sister Dee in the family home. Raquel had a difficult childhood and went into a traumatic series of foster homes at seven. She was finally placed with the Liang family at the age of nine and was adopted by them. She is brilliant, guarded, independent, hyper-observant, and analytical. Dee is a talented digital and online investigator. She’s curious, persistent, tech-savvy, and is interested in her parent’s ancestry. Al is patient, pragmatic, and acts as a stabilizing force for Raquel. She tends to ask herself “What would Al do?” to help her in uncomfortable situations.

I didn’t realize this was the second book in a series until I was part way through the novel. Initially, it felt like I entered the book part-way through it. It took a little while to get immersed in the story. However, once that happened, I was hooked. The dynamic interactions between Raquel, Al, and Dee are excellent. Raquel’s unique way processing situations makes her a unique protagonist. However, her alienating personality may not appeal to all readers.

The author does a great job of realistically depicting grief and trauma as well as being effective in misdirection during the narrative and keeping readers guessing as the story twists and turns. Additionally, the character progression for Raquel moves from a guarded and somewhat reckless investigator to a more meticulous one moves slowly, but felt even more realistic because it didn’t happen in an instant.

Overall, this is an entertaining and suspenseful crime thriller with a compelling female protagonist and high-stakes family drama. Those who enjoy mysteries and police procedurals will likely enjoy this well-plotted novel. This is the first book that I’ve read by this author and I am already looking forward to finding out what happens in the next book as well as reading the first book in the series. The books are best read in order.

Ballantine – Bantam and Laurie R. King provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. The publication date is currently set for September 8, 2026.
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My 3.94 rounded to 4 stars review is coming soon.

[Donna Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded upwards.

Those Who Are Gone is the second installment in the Raquel Liang mystery series by Laurie R. King. I read and enjoyed the first in the series, and then found this one when I was in need of an audio book. I came away feeling a bit conflicted about it.

My thanks go to NetGalley and RB Media for the review copy. This book is available to the public now.

The story opens with Raquel’s sister, Dee, in a tailspin. The women’s parents are dead, and the two sisters live together and are close. Growing up, they believed that Raquel was adopted, but Dee was the biological child of their parents. Now Dee has used an ancestry kit and discovered that she was also adopted. She’s not taking it well.

So, the mystery…? The crime…? The….you see my concern.

In many, many reviews, I have defended authors of long-running mystery series that delve deeper into character development as their series progress. There are readers out there that expect every mystery to focus exclusively on catching a serial killer or whatever sort of baddie is the culprit, yet once a series is well underway, the only way to keep it fresh—there being only so many ways and reasons to kill someone—is to make it feel more personal to the protagonist.

In this case, however, we’re only on the second book of the series, and not only are we spending time—a lot of it—on character development, but this is how the book opens, and it takes its time to get moving.

Once the thing is well underway, it does become compelling, and the last ten percent or so has me on the edge of my chair. So please don’t think I’m calling this a boring read; but if I weren’t already a fan of this author’s, and if I didn’t owe a review, I might not have stuck around long enough to find this out.

Here is the tricky part. I became a huge fan of King’s mysteries back in the 1990s, when she published the Kate Martinelli series. Merely mentioning that series, all these years later, makes my heart pound. The adrenaline rush of that series is unmistakable; in fact, now that I am older, I might even find it stressful, it’s so dynamic. And so I ask myself if it is fair to compare these books to the ones she’s writing now. Would I be so critical if I had read nothing else by this author? Is a good book still a good book when it’s not as good as what came before it? If this was a debut novel, surely I would be kinder and more encouraging. Instead, I find myself grumbling about the slow build-up.

This audio book has two narrators. The first is Vivienne Leheney, who reads most of the book and voices Raquel’s internal monologue, and she does a fine job. The second is Luis Moreno, the bad guy; his reading is smooth, but almost stereotypically sinister.

Would I recommend this book to those that enjoy the genre? Sure I would, but I would recommend the Martinelli series more, if you can find it.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a follow up to Laurie King’s 2022 novel, Back to the Garden, one of my favorites of that year. This is a different book but it’s a very enjoyable one, one that could almost have been written by the master of the police procedural, Michael Connelly. There’s something about King’s writing that grabs my heart and explains why she has so many legions of extremely loyal fans. She’s a nimble and flexible writer, and here, she goes back to her roots with a complex police novel. She won an Edgar out of the gate for A Grave Talent (1993) another excellent police novel.

This is a police novel with bells on. She’s created a homicide cop as her main character, Raquel Laing, and in this book she clarifies a timeline which includes the events in Back to the Garden, also clarifying Raquel’s troubled past. Raquel is what we might recognize as neurodivergent – some social cues elude her, but she’s brilliant at reading micro expressions and translating those readings into an often – to her colleagues – unexpected solution, which seem to be mainly correct. Her slight problem relating to other humans makes her a challenge as a partner, and in this novel, she has a new partner named Pam who seems more interested in her Manolo Blahniks and her boyfriend than she is in her job.

Raquel maintains ties with Al, on the cold case squad, and she has worked cold cases (see Back to the Garden) but in this book she’s back as a homicide consultant after an injury. The book zig zags in time a bit, taking in a past case that left Raquel injured and a new case that seems connected to the one in the past. The other story that comes up is Raquel’s parentage. Raquel still lives with her adopted sister, Dee, whose parents, the Laings, took Raquel in at age 9 after the death of her parents and some awful foster home experiences.

Raquel’s father was a drug dealer and Raquel’s memories of him, while not awful, are also tied to a variety of “uncles” and “aunts” who were in the same business, one she hadn’t understood as a child but a business that in her present career as a cop is ever present. The case that got her shot, the death of a lower-level drug dealer in an especially vicious manner, has reverberations that extend throughout the story.

King’s nimble time hopping was not confusing, but instead serves to elucidate the narrative, both in terms of Raquel grappling with her family past, as well as in terms of tying many various threads of the story together. This should have been a boring book, and in other hands, it might have been. In King’s hands, I was unable to stop reading, curious about what Raquel was discovering both about herself and about the death of the young drug dealer.

King’s mind is a far reaching and over arching one – she looks as every single aspect of the story she’s telling, so she takes in tiny details as well as big ones, and it’s a reason her books are so rich and layered. I almost kept waiting for the skillful balancing act of this complicated narrative to fall off the rails but it never did. This is a well done and memorable book.

[William de_Rham · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Those Who Are Gone” is a well-written but slow-moving police procedural set in San Francisco and involving multiple murders over many years. I admired some aspects but found the plot problematic.

Raquel and Dee Laing are sisters by adoption. They live together in the home they grew up in and have a close relationship. Main character Raquel is an SFPD homicide/cold case detective who describes herself as "being on the spectrum" and is somewhat obtuse when it comes to the feelings of others. Her older sister Dee is an agoraphobic private investigator specializing in computer research and hacking. Not only is the novel a murder mystery, it is also the story of each woman’s search for answers about their ancestries and the identities and fates of their birth parents.

I found the characters to be well-drawn and, if not all that compelling, at least interesting. (However, it should be noted that other reviewers have found the sisters very compelling).

Author Laurie R. King writes well. Her prose and dialogue are clear, realistic, and without a lot of literary embellishment. Topics she seeks to explore (e.g., police procedures, computer research, genealogy services, etc.) are thoroughly researched and described.

However, I found the plot to be unnecessarily complex, and even confusing in places, and yet also coincidental and ultimately predictable. I finished the novel thinking: I came all this way for a result that was apparent by the halfway mark (if not earlier)?

Three stars.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Laurie R. King, and publisher Ballantine/Bantam for providing me with a complimentary electronic ARC. All of the foregoing is my honest, independent opinion.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intricate and highly detailed police procedural.

When San Francisco Inspector Raquel Laing bends the rules on a murder case, she finds herself reassigned to the Cold Case Unit alongside mentor Al Hawkin. What seems like a routine transfer quickly turns personal as Raquel and her adoptive sister, Dee, uncover long-buried family secrets tied to drugs and an old investigation. As past trauma and present danger collide, the sisters are drawn into a dangerous game when forgotten history and family stories come to the surface.

Although the author definitely knows how to construct a true police procedural, and the sister dynamic between Raquel and Dee adds a compelling emotional anchor, the pacing and the plot just sort of drag into ….well, a sort of boring tale. I just could not bring myself to be too bothered and it was such a slow burn unraveling of their family history that I found it a bit of a slog. I tried really hard to care about the characters, but again, they are so dull and I just couldn’t deal with all their past trauma still controlling their lives. Lots of coincidences and parallels in the case which seemed to stretch my ability to buy in. I didn’t feel any tension and I just wanted this very slow burn to be over and answer all the questions. Ho hum.

I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book provided by the publishers. The narrators, Vivienne Leheny and Luis Moreno, did an adequate job of trying to voice the characters with accents and dramatic flair. There were quite a few mispronunciations of places and nouns but I find that quite often in audio. Usually I find listening while reading to create an immersive experience that enhances my enjoyment of a book. Although the plot was plodding, the two did their best.

[Keila (speedreadstagram) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is loosely a police procedural book. I mean that because it was a little more than that. Usually when I read a police procedural I expect a certain template of sorts. This one diverged from that into a family drama almost. There is a lot of family, especially since we learn a lot more about Raquel’s past. Sadly I had not read the first book so I missed out on quite a bit of the history. I do recommend reading that first. The author captures reality very well in this book. I could feel the trauma and grief that was occurring. There was a lot of suspense and I was hooked the whole time.

[R L HERSKOWITZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC

[Marty Tool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting police procedural, with some interpersonal relationships between two sisters by adoption. We have a personal mystery as well as several murders that lead to another set of mysteries. The chapter heading tells you if we are in the past or the here and now, several reviews talked about it being convoluted, I didn't find it to be so. The past murders are a set of men who knew each other all killed within a short amount of time, once a gun is picked up as evidence, more history comes to light with the guns history. As stated, interesting story that a lot of past murders and cold cases get tied up, as well as personal mysteries. Appreciate NetGalley allowing me an early read.

[Sue Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absorbing and intricately plotted mystery that kept me riveted throughout. So many threads woven together to reach the conclusion. Raquel Laing, our main protagonist, had a troubled childhood especially after the murder of her drug dealer father and the next two years shuffled from one abusive foster home to the next. At age nine, she was placed into a loving home with an older sister where she began to thriv Now she's an Investigator with the SFPD with a special ability to read microexpressions honed in those years of foster home traumas. Her sister, Dee, is both a genius computer specialist and an agoraphobe. Both characters are fully realized, complex humans. After picking up a case of a murdered drug dealer, Raquel starts drawing connections to her father's murder.

Back in the 90s, I was an enormous fan of her King's Kate Martinelli series who was another SFPD detective. King then pivoted to her best selling historical mystery series and only recently returned to contemporary mystery to my absolute delight. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

[Ann · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Multiple perspectives in a strong police procedural with tense moments and interesting characters. The connections from a current homicide case to several cold cases, family secrets, thoughtful details about neurodivergence, and introspection on memories and fear make for tense situations.

[Robbin Stull · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rock on Rock-L! I thoroughly enjoyed this second book in the Raquel Lange series. We get a look back before Raquel was injured and how it happened. There's excellent tie-in to the first book, both personally and professionally, and so very much more about both Raquel and Dee. Once again the SFPD Cold Case crew is involved with both old and new homicides that intertwine, providing some much needed information and yes, closure. I am looking forward to more Raquel, Dee and Al to come. I hope readers enjoy this book as much as I did.

[Bookreporter.com Mystery & Thriller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurie R. King is probably best known for her terrific novels featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. This unique reimagining, which depicts Holmes much later in life than the many adventures we have lived through with him, makes for a stellar series that maintains the spirit of the greatest detective of all time.

King clearly knows how to write a complex mystery. THOSE WHO ARE GONE, the second entry in her series starring SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing (following BACK TO THE GARDEN), is further proof of this.

Raquel lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, an international online investigator. The action jumps through recent time periods in their lives and opens with Raquel, who had decided to step away from the SFPD after being severely injured on the job. Now she is informing Dee that she is planning to return as a consulting detective. This news is not well received by Dee, who had brought Raquel into her business while she recovered.

Dee decides to join Raquel in a mission that she has always been obsessed with: finding out what happened to her birth family who are now long gone. We then step back to the previous year and the case that nearly cost Raquel her life. When she arrives at the site of a bound and murdered young man in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, Raquel and her partner have no clue what impact the deceased drug dealer, Gilbert Gallegos, will have on both of their lives.

As she is sorting all of this out, Raquel is also soliciting advice from her mentor, Al Hawkin, about the series of cold cases he is aware of that might be connected to the death of her birth parents. The gone, or departed, in this novel are not just represented by the victims of the active cases these crime fighters are working but also the ghosts of their own familial pasts.

The Gallegos investigation leads to a well-known restaurateur who may have been mixed up in some dark dealings that were beyond his capabilities. The final conflagration of this case ends with a key suspect being gunned down after shooting and badly wounding Raquel. The work may not be done, but the mental refocusing it does to her ultimately may provide a level of healing that she needs. Watching her and Dee go down their own journeys of self-discovery elevates this book above a mere mystery or crime saga.

THOSE WHO ARE GONE is a first-rate novel and one of the crowing achievements of Laurie R. King’s career. In two short books, she has helped readers really get to know and appreciate such complex characters as Raquel and Dee. Storytelling like this should provide a long life for this series.

Reviewed by Ray Palen

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 Stars ⭐️

This was a “new to me” author and I didn’t realize until I started this that it was the second book in the series. So, that right there might have been some of the issues that impacted my experience on this, and that’s on me.

But, the biggest issue that I had, well, one of the biggest issues that I had was with the narration and the narrating duo of Vivienne Leheny and Luis Moreno. The narration was done in such a way as to come across as EXTREMELY dry. There didn’t feel like there was any emotion, or fluctuation or changes in the reading. It made the story feel flat and monotonous.

The other thing was the amount of time spent on the character development in the very beginning. It was a lot and the problem was it made the story feel slow and had me wondering when the story was going to actually start up.

This was a police procedural and I am a fan of this genre. The story does actually start and create a build up during the last 10% of the book and that was a good thing as there was some action and drama.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media | Recorded Books for the opportunity to listen to and review this ALC. This book is out for publication on September 8th, 2026.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was given opportunity to read this book through NetGalley. I enjoy the main character created by this author and was happy to have a second book featuring her.

Net Galley

[Carole Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Secrets of the past are sometimes best left buried

The murder of a drug dealer in San Francisco is hardly an unusual event, but there were elements of her latest case that stood out to SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing. Her investigation led her to suspect the involvement of a successful restauranteur, and she ended up in a shoot-out that took her out of commission for a while. After working for a time with her one-time mentor in Cold Cases as she recovered from her injuries, she is now readying herself to return to Homicide, In her personal life, her sister Dee (the daughter of the couple who adopted Raquel when she was nine) wants to know more about her extended family, information their now-deceased parents never shared. What Dee uncovers completely upends her world, and Raquel starts seeing connections between Dee's family, the murdered drug dealer case and the drug-related killing years earlier of her own father. Is she seeing patterns where there are none? The personal and professional pursuits inch closer together...as does unimaginable danger for the sisters.
Those Who Are Gone is the second novel by author Laurie R. King (after Back to the Garden) featuring neurodivergent investigator Raquel, whose childhood trauma left her with a highly developed ability to decipher peoples' expressions and physical responses even as she struggles with interpersonal interactions. Dee, who took over her sister's care when their parents died, is extremely adept in finding information online (her methods are not always strictly legal), and she and Raquel share a very close bond with their work frequently overlaps. They as well as the various secondary characters are well-developed and nuanced, and the dynamics at play in the personal and professional arenas result in a story that goes beyond a simple police procedural. Weaving together past traumas, buried secrets, families both of blood and found, the search for one's identity,, the dangerous world of drug cartels and the desaparecidos of Mexico, Ms King has fashioned an engrossing mystery that unfurls over multiple time periods (with chapters that shift between them, which requires the reader to be alert to keep straight which time period they are reading about) with emotional depth. It can be read as a standalone, but I would recommend where possible that people read Back to the Garden first to have a better understanding of Raquel and those around her. Fans of the author's other series as well as of the first volume in this one and readers of Elizabeth George, Julia Spencer-Fleming and Michael Connelly should definitely add this series to their TBR pile. I enjoyed this volume every bit as much as I did the first in the series, and eagerly await the next installment. My thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books/Bantam Books for allowing me access to the novel in exchange for my honest review.

[Jill Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Back to the Garden but I'll be honest - I did not remember Laing as a character at all... Having now read a book devoted almost entirely to her, that doesn't surprise me so much - she is not the type of unique and multifaceted character that I have come to expect from a Laurie R King protagonist. She's a lot more straightforward and, frankly, less interesting then Kate Martinelli or Mary Russell.

While there are a lot of admirable qualities to this one, on the whole I felt it was way too long and slow-moving. There was a lot of description that felt unnecessary and drew me out of the action/suspense. The revelations also felt overly complicated both in substance and in the way they were teased out. Again, this kept reducing the tension - which was not what I wanted to happen because when things were clicking along, I was wholly immersed in the story and couldn't wait to learn more. Unfortunately that feeling grew less common as the story wore on and by the end I was just waiting for the resolution rather than enjoying the ride...

I still enjoyed the book as a whole, but I'm not sure if this series is one I will continue.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.

[Amy Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Bantam Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.

I managed to make this book last a whole week, I was enjoying it so much. Laurie King is in my top five authors and when one of her books is released, I literally cannot wait to read it. This book was a sequel to BACK TO THE GARDEN, and it's where we delve deep into the life history of Raquel Laing and her sister Dee, both girls adopted by a couple who had been activists in Mexico in their youth, both girls descendants of birth fathers who came from a life of crime. When Raquel catches a homicide that ties into their collective pasts, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between the sisters and the man behind a series of murders. Truly an excellent layered police procedural that goes back and forth in time. Highly recommend this very smart thriller.

Now to wait for another episode!!

[Vickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a twisted story of sisters who are both investigators, one for the police department and one self-employed. Raquel works in the homicide division until she is moved to work on cold cases. Dee does international investigations and travels as she solves domestic or corporate mysteries. Raquel finds herself involved in a case with a drug cartel and Dee is embroiled in the world of tracking down DNA. Both discover that their worlds can be dangerous as secrets from the past sneak into their present and threaten to destroy them completely. The pace is moderate most of the time, sometimes fast. The characters are mostly likable but I am not a fan of same sex relationships so that part put me off. The mystery and suspense were well written and offered a compelling story, especially the mystery that is part of the story of the sisters. I won’t divulge any more lest I reveal a spoiler. I think that I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read the first book in the series as there was a lot of background information that I did not have and had to wait for the author to reference it in the current story. Thus I recommend reading the series in order.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions expressed are my own.

[Pam Kovalic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raquel Laing is a homicide inspector with the San Francisco police department. She is considered odd by most of her coworkers but she has the unique ability to read people’s micro expressions and uses that ability to come to answers in cases that others miss. She seems to lack social cues, possibly putting her with a label of neurodivergent. Raquel had a very difficult childhood and was adopted at nine years old by the Laing family. The elder Laings have since died, but Dee Laing, her sister, still live together in the family home. Dee is an online investigator for organizations all over the globe, but she suffers from agoraphobia and doesn’t leave the house. Raquel is investigating a case that involves a murder in the drug world that expands to more people in the drug world and possibly cartels. The case brings up elements from the past, some cold case murders in particular that involve Raquel’s murdered father. It also overlaps with some people Dee is looking into for her own family history, spurred on by a DNA match as she tries to find out more of her own beginnings. The book is interesting and moves at a good pace. I found the characters of Raquel and Dee to be very interesting. Other characters are not given a lot of depth, so didn’t really stand out. I give the book 4 stars out of 5.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Addition to the Series

You can never go wrong with by placing yourself in Laurie R. king’s hands. She is a master storyteller who weaves a fast paced tale.

[Andrew Langert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley.

This book featured Raquel Laing, a detective/investigator and younger sister of another private investigator (Dee). They are both adopted and their birth families were involved in the illegal drug trade business. In this book, they investigate the murder of a prominent restaurant owner. But Dee in particular is researching her and her sister’s ancestries. They end up opening up some cold cases from the distant past that may or may not have involved their birth families.

If I were to read this book again, I would keep a cheat sheet of all the names who appear in this book and how they relate to Raquel and Dee. I found all the simultaneous investigations confusing. And progress in these investigations, which was reported in detail, was quite slow-moving.

I labored through this book, which is rated much higher by others but did not appeal to me.

[Kel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay so this was my first real procedural mystery and as a true crime girlie I REALLY thought this was going to be my thing. It was not my thing.

I didn’t read book one in this series so that might be part of my disconnect, but even accounting for that, this just felt very matter of fact. Dry, honestly. There wasn’t a ton of depth or layering to the writing, and the case he’s trying to solve and the family history getting uncovered along the way never felt like they were actually talking to each other. They just sort of existed side by side.

It also felt long and slow moving to me. Like I kept waiting for it to pick up and it just… didn’t, not really.

Honestly this might be a ME problem. Maybe I don’t love procedurals as much as I thought I did? I can appreciate what this book was doing, it just didn’t hit for me personally.

Not saying don’t read it, procedural fans might vibe with this way more than I did. But for me it was a pretty flat reading experience.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ALC in exchange for an honest review!

[Patricia Doyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The beginning third of the book barely held my interest. The story was choppy and confusing and the ‘mystery’ was unrealistic. The characters — especially Raquel — were sterile and difficult to connect with. The pace was slow and took too long to get to the end.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Those Who Are Gone.

[Ray Palen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 Stars

Laurie R. King is probably best known for her terrific mystery series that features Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. That reimagining, depicting Holmes much later in life than the many adventures we have lived through with him, makes for a stellar series that maintains the spirit of the greatest detective of all time.

However, when Laurie R. King steps away from this series she is not as well-known, despite the fact that she clearly knows how to write a complex mystery. Perhaps her latest novel, THOSE WHO ARE GONE, the second to depict SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing will be the one that resonates with her loyal Russell/Holmes readers as it clearly stands alone as a terrific read and well-crafted crime novel.

Raquel lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, herself and international online investigator, both of whom we initially met it this series first novel, BACK TO THE GARDEN. I believe THOSE WHO ARE GONE surpasses that read and set up a burgeoning series that may one day rival King’s Russell/Holmes novels. The action jumps through recent time periods in the lives of Raquel and Dee and opens with Raquel, who had decided to step away from the SFPD after a case that found her shot and severely injured, and now informing Dee that she was planning to return as a consulting detective. This news was not well received by Dee, who had brought her adoptive sister into her own business while she recovered.
A decision is made by Dee to join Raquel in a mission that has always driven her obsessively, finding out what happened to her actual family who were now long gone. Readers will learn in due time just how ironic this is for Dee. We then step back to the previous year and the case that nearly cost Raquel her life. When she arrived at the murder site of a bound and assassinated young man in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, Raquel and her partner Pam have no clue what impact the deceased drug dealer Gilbert Gallegos is going to have on both of their lives.

As she is sorting this case out, Raquel is also soliciting advice from her mentor on the job, Al Hawkin, about the series of cold cases he was aware of that might be connected to the death of her birth parents. The gone, or departed, in this novel are not merely represented by the victims of the active cases these crime fighters are working but also the ghosts of their own familial pasts. This is amplified significantly when Dee learns through an online ancestry site that the people she thought were her parents were merely her adoptive ones --- and she is now as lost in the past and within her own identity as Raquel.

The Gallegos case leads to a well-known local restauranteur who may have been mixed up in some dark dealings that were beyond his capabilities. When the final conflagration of this case ends with a key suspect being gunned down after shooting and badly wounding Raquel. The final work of this case may not be done, but the mental refocusing it does to her may ultimately provide a level of healing that she needs. Watching her and Dee go down their own journeys of self-discovery elevates this novel above a mere mystery or crime saga.

THOSE WHO ARE GONE is a first-rate literary mystery novel and one of the crowing achievements of Laurie R. King. In two short novels, she has made readers really get to know and appreciate complex characters like Raquel and Dee and storytelling like this should provide a long life for this series.

Reviewed by Ray Palen for Book Reporter

[Tessa Talks Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Those Who Are Gone, especially because it takes something that can occasionally feel a little static to me, a police procedural, and gives it a much more layered story through the dual timeline.

Raquel Laing is investigating a murder in San Francisco when the case spirals into something much bigger, eventually landing her in the Cold Case Unit. At the same time, questions about Raquel and her sister Dee’s own past begin surfacing. And those two threads? They start inching toward one another in some very interesting ways.

The dual timeline was probably my favorite part. Procedurals can sometimes become very case, clue, interview, repeat for me. I enjoy them, but they don’t always have that just one more chapter pull. Here, the movement between past and present added another layer of mystery and kept me wondering not only what happened in the cases Raquel was investigating, but what exactly had happened in her own history. Suddenly the investigation felt much more personal.

I also loved Raquel herself. Having a neurodivergent detective at the center of the story added so much personality and humanity to what could have been a much more straightforward crime novel. The way she thinks, notices things, interacts with people, and sometimes approaches situations differently makes her memorable. She isn’t written as a quirky detective trope. She feels like a whole, complicated person, which made me much more invested in everything happening around her.

And there is a LOT happening around her. Cold cases, family secrets, questionable investigative choices, a dangerous cartel…this story keeps quietly expanding until you realize just how many pieces Laurie R. King has put on the board. 🧩 I particularly loved watching the present-day investigation and the older mysteries begin connecting because that is exactly the kind of slow reveal that works for me.

There were still occasional moments where the procedural side slowed things down a bit, but the dual timeline kept pulling me back in before I ever felt stuck there.

Those Who Are Gone ended up being much more personal and layered than I expected going in. It’s a crime procedural, yes, but underneath that is a story about family, identity, the past we inherit, and how something buried years ago can still reach right into the present.

🌹 Floral Verdict: A Rose
A smart, layered mystery that takes the familiar police procedural and makes it feel much more personal. I definitely recommend this one, especially for readers who love cold cases, family secrets, and mysteries where the past refuses to stay put.

[Julie Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story. This is the second book in the series and not having read the first one I was slightly confused to begin with but as the whole story does end up being focused on the sister fathers it didn't last long and I soon caught on and got swept up in the investigation.
The story is mostly told by Raquel, with the occasional chapter from a mystery man. The story also jumps around with the timeline as a number of the deaths are cold cases. With so much going on and the way things turned out to be connected I think this was the right way to go because everything does eventually gets cleared up.
I liked the sisters and despite being a homicide cop and a cyber expert, they had there own struggles and histories to over come, which made them feel like real humans that the reader or listener could connect with or at least understand and sympathise with.
As for the cases, there was a number of deaths and moving parts that kept you on your toes and listening until the end. I hope there are more investigations for Raquel and Dee planned for the future.

After a brutal murder Raquel quickly pinpoints a suspect but when things goes sideways and the suspect dies after shooting her, she is reluctant to close the case with so many unanswered questions and her gut tells her there is more to the story. During her recovery she works a cold case, that not only has a connection to her father's death but also the case that she got shot during. Is her brain seeing connection that aren't there? At the same time her adopted sister Dee finds out Raquel wasn't the only adopted child in the family. Spiralling, she tries to discover more about her real family and is quickly met with secrets, lies and a connection to the drug world. Raquel wants to help her sister but when connection to her father's death start appearing things get complicated. Can the sisters help each other find the answers the need before anybody else dies?
The story uses two narrators with most of the story being told by Raquel and the female narrator, who I liked. The male narrator had a accent and a very deep voice which made him harder to understand, but as it was only a few times it wasn't a problem.
I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

[Margie Bunting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those Who Are Gone, book #2 in Laurie R. King's Raquel Laing series, is an ultra-detailed police procedural focused on Raquel Laing, a neurodivergent SFPD homicide inspector, now relegated to assisting her mentor in the Cold Case unit. Raquel is an expert in analyzing microexpressions that others might miss and is respected for her analytical prowess, although fellow law enforcement professionals don't always appreciate her lack of people skills.

The gruesome murder of a low-level drug dealer sparks an investigation that takes Raquel in many directions, sometimes aided by information supplied by her sister. Dee is a cybersecurity expert (and hacker) who works out of her home because she is severely agoraphobic. As the investigation proceeds, Raquel and Dee also look into their own fraught early family history, which ultimately has some connections with Raquel's current case.

I admire the author's ability to build a very convoluted legal case with authenticity, combined with her outstanding storytelling skills. I did have some reservations about this book, however. Chapters in the first 40% or so were labeled "Then," with most of the successive chapters marked "Now." I expected that with that labeling, the action would go back and forth between timelines, but the "Now" chapters just covered the continuing story after one particular traumatic event. I felt that a few intermittent chapters labeled "Him"--narrated by an anonymous, self-aggrandizing character I assumed was the ultimate villain--seemed unnecessary, considering what happened at the end of the book, although they did serve to increase the suspense. Finally, I was unable to connect with Raquel, who struck me as a one-note character. She and Dee each had romantic relationships, but neither was fleshed out enough to seem important. But although I may not seek out future books in this particular series, I love King's other series and standalones and will definitely keep those on my must-read list.

My review is based on a complimentary pre-release copy of the book.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those Who Are Gone by Laurie R King is a police procedural with outside help. Raquel Laing is the police detective at the forefront of the novel. She is now working cold cases with her mentor, Al Hawkin, because she is rehabbing from a gunshot wound. She is working daily to be fit enough to rejoin her regular squad. Raquel is neuro-divergent and her mind works in curious ways, always looking for connections, even when there appear to be none, over to her. She lives with her sister, Dee. Dee’s parent’s adopted Raquel when she was nine and it was the first real home she’d ever had. She knew her dad loved her but he was a criminal and often not present; then he was killed. Things started happening when Dee uploaded her DNA to an ancestry site, hoping to connect with family. What she found was that she, also, had been adopted. They had never told her and she was devastated. Dee is a hacker, one of the best, and after trying to purge the house of any memories of her “parents,” she did what she does best: she started looking. Raquel was working a cold case involving two men she knew to be comrades of her father. Dee was helping with that, too, off the books.

Raquel is amazingly well adjusted for someone who led the early life she had. Dee is agoraphobic and never leaves the house, so Raquel leaves for her. People die. They are all drug criminals and that happened often. Some of them are unexpected. Some deaths are related. Some are not. This is a powerful novel of how one’s past can affect one’s present. The characters are amazing; so smart, so clever, so caring. It is an intriguing investigation with all kinds of overlaps, as it turns out. The SFPD has much to be proud of.

I was invited to read Those Who Are Gone by Ballantine. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Negalley #Ballantine #LaurieRKing #ThoseWhoAreGone

[Kathy Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second Raquel Liang mystery brings Raquel's work home. While recovering from being shot, Raquel is working on cold cases with her mentor Al. The case she is assigned is a drive-by shooting in 1997. The two men were associates of her father who was also murdered in 1997. She is also working on a current homicide. Gilbert Gallegos was gunned down in an abandoned parking lot, and a video has shown up on YouTube of the killing.

Raquel is good at seeing connections, but maybe this time she's too good. She sees a connection between Gallegos death and the death of her father. Both were killed the same way. Both were involved in the drug trade. And the guns used in the shootings were used in a number of other murders of people associated with the drug trade.

While Raquel is working on her two cases, her sister Dee is doing some research of her own. She's sent her DNA to one of those online sites and the results throw her. She learns that Emma and Tom Liang were not her birth parents, that she, like Raquel was adopted. This hits her hard and her first reaction is anger at the Liangs for never telling her about the adoption. She also learns that she might be related to Delores Ortega and have other Ortega relatives. She begins trying to track down Delores and other family members and runs into roadblocks after roadblocks.

While Raquel is helping Dee, she sees another possible connection. Dee's past might be connected to her two cases.

There is a hidden actor who is also a viewpoint character who is connected to it all. But can Raquel unravel it all in time to save lives? Raquel is an intriguing character. She's neurodivergent and some the skills she uses as a homicide detective are those she honed as a foster child in some really bad homes.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raquel Laing is an Inspector with the SFPD, and lives with her adoptive sister Dee, a cybersecurity expert and hacker who is agoraphobic.

Raquel is recovering from an injury when she starts working on the murder of Gilbert Gallegos, and because she has cut a few corners in the investigation, she is relegated to the cold case unit, where she works with her friend and mentor Al Hawkins. Here she is looking into the murders of two drug dealers, who were friends with her father, another dealer who was shot years ago.

Dee decides to research her ancestry, and finds information that stuns her. As she researches her family, she and Raquel find themselves both digging deep in their family past as well as into the crimes of their fathers.

This was told in 2 main timelines, with an extra few chapters by 'him' - clearly the eventual perpetrator - thrown in. I found the 'him' chapters a bit of a distraction, and don't feel they added much to the plot.

The rest of the characters were very good though. Raquel herself is quirky and intelligent. She excels at reading microexpressions, and uses that skill in her work. She struggles with interactions with people, and takes help from Al in knowing how to work with others. Her relationship with her sister was very interesting, and it was uplifting to see how they supported each other.

Lots happened in the plot, with quite a few characters to keep track of. But I found the author did a good job of keeping them all clear, and making the dual timelines work.

It was a good book that I enjoyed reading. I wasn't aware that the author had written another book about Raquel - and I will be sure to read that one. I'm looking forward to more about this character.