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. Fresh from her latest case, Frankie travels to Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood in search of Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who went missing 11 months ago and hasn’t been found. Frankie finds the local police detectives—especially Detective Lotham—frustrated at having reached a dead end in the investigation. With the help of Lotham and Angelique’s brother, Emmanuel, Frankie begins her investigation.

Interviewing Angelique’s friends, Frankie learns that Angelique spent the summer in an arts program at the local rec center and came back changed, preoccupied with something. It wasn’t a boy, but something definitely changed in her life. Frankie meets Charlie at an AA meeting. He volunteers at the rec center and introduces Frankie to Frederic, the rec center’s supervisor. Frederic remembers Angelique but doesn’t have much to say about her.

Angelique was taking extra classes online so she could graduate high-school early, and her brother, Emmanuel, checks the website and finds that Angelique turned in her final class assignment only three weeks earlier. She is still alive. Getting a copy of the final assignment, Emmanuel recognizes a code Angelique taught him and finds the words, “Help us.” Soon thereafter, Angelique reappears, trying to buy a burner phone. She gets scared and flees but not before dropping a fake ID card. Lotham lets Emmanuel study the card, and Emmanuel recognizes his mother’s birthday and the date of an important Haitian holiday; he concludes that Angelique is thinking of their mother, who still lives in Haiti.

Frankie shows Charlie a list of the other kids who were at the rec center the previous summer, and he recognizes the name Livia Samdi, a girl who went missing a few months ago. Frankie and Lotham go back over the evidence from Angelique’s disappearance with the link to Livia in mind. They realize that the day Angelique disappeared, she and Livia had exchanged clothes. The two disappearances are definitely connected.

Livia’s mother doesn’t know enough about her daughter’s life, but she tells Frankie if she finds Livia, to make sure she doesn’t come home; it isn’t safe for her. As she hurries Frankie out of the house, someone shoots at her.

Frankie and Lotham follow a trail of clues, building up a theory of the case. Over the summer, Angelique and Livia had a confrontation with an older boy who was selling low-quality fake IDs. They connect that with the fake ID dropped by Angelique outside the phone store. The disappearance of the girls suggests human trafficking with each of the girls being used as leverage to control the other.

Livia is found dead, strangled, in the park. Angelique was seen in the passenger seat of a van near the scene, so they are reasonably sure she is still alive, but something must have changed if the kidnappers were willing to kill one of their captives.

Frankie turns up photos of both girls on the internet on the website of a small college. The college turns out to be fake, the website copied from that of a real college except for the pictures of the girls. Charlie suggests that the girls—or whoever is holding them—may be selling fake documents that would help people apply for valid student visas.

Emmanuel gets a phone call from Angelique screaming for help. Frankie rushes to the Badeau apartment, but when she gets there, Emmanuel has been kidnapped by strangers and dragged away in a white van. His aunt heard a gunshot and believes Emmanuel is dead. Running from the apartment, Frankie encounters Livia’s older brother, Deke, a previously convicted felon she and Lotham suspect is involved in the girls’ kidnapping. Deke has been shot and dies in Frankie’s arms, confessing that everything was his fault and that he tried to save the girls and Emmanuel.

His confession gives Frankie the final clue she needs; Frederic, the executive officer of the rec center, has been recruiting students as drug dealers. Deke went to him with Livia’s idea about making fake IDs, but they turned out to be too difficult to make with the equipment they had available. Angelique came up with the idea for student visa papers instead and took Livia’s place to confront Frederic. Frederic kidnapped Angelique and then Livia, forcing them to develop the fake college website. The site is now almost complete, and the girls are now liabilities.

Frankie goes to the rec center and finds Angelique and Emmanuel. Frederic tackles her, then takes Angelique captive and holds Frankie at gunpoint. He shoots her but releases Angelique. Lotham arrives and shoots Frederic.

Frankie recovers from the bullet wound, having brought home one of her case subjects alive for the first time. It is a new beginning for her, and she packs up her few belongings and moves on to her next case.