Guest Author - Barbara Rice DeShong, PhD.

What if someone hired you to find the man who’d abducted their little girl, and after much danger and hard work, you are successful--only to realize finding the daughter was the worst thing that could have happened?

“Gone, Baby, Gone” (2007) is a premier example of the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” A four-year-old girl, Amanda McCready, is abducted and police are having little success in finding her. While Amanda’s mother, Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) seems more interested in press coverage than finding her child, Amanda’s aunt pleads with two inexperienced private detectives, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) until they agree to take the case. The aunt believes the two detectives will have more success since they are not cops and thus, may have more luck getting closer to the drug-world-connected thugs suspected of involvement. Also Kenzie and Gennaro know Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, a crime-ridden place not for people who expect to live amongst law-respecting citizens.

The young private eye duo stays with the case even after a murder occurs because now they’ve fallen in love with the innocent missing girl. Kenzie and Gennaro question Amanda’s mother without learning much, mostly because Helene is high and not that concerned about her daughter. Surveying the neighbors, the detectives learn that Amanda’s mother had been out on the street doing drugs with her boyfriend on the day the child was abducted. Gennaro begins to doubt their project but Kenzie drives hard forward.

Kenzie finds Amanda. She is safe in the country house of the man who had abducted her, Jack Doyle, (Morgan Freeman), a retiring homicide detective, and his wife. Doyle, who’d lost his own young daughter many years ago, had come to know the McCreadys after many vice calls to the area and determined to save Amanda from her drug-addicted, self-centered mother and the sort of characters living in Dorchester. The Doyles wanted Amanda to have a chance in life.

Gennaro wants to walk away without exposing the Doyles, but Kenzie believes the right thing to do is have them arrested. He watches Doyle taken away in handcuffs. Kenzie returns Amanda to her mother. A few minutes later, without the slightest hesitation, Helene asks offhandly as she collects her purse, if Kenzie would mind babysitting Amanda because she had plans to go out. As the mother flits out—without even acknowledging a good-bye to her daughter sitting next to Kenzie on the couch--the detective and Amanda them stare coma-like at the television.

Kenzie realizes that the ultimate result of his spirited campaign to save Amanda has actually destroyed Amanda’s chance for a good life.