Easy Pickin’s. Fred Harris. 2000. 280p. HarperCollins. With a keen historical sense and storytelling touted by the New York Times as “spare yet emotionally rich,” Fred Harris spins an involving tale in Easy Pickin’s, his second mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma. Sheriff Okie Dunn is new on the job. The onetime boxer turned law student is now the Cash County sheriff, and Okie finally seems to have settled down. He’s even casting about for a woman-and might have caught two. Then the quiet town into which he has settled is turned upside down. Three strangers blow into Vernon looking for a young heiress who was adopted at birth. After two break-ins and an assault on Okie’s deputy, Okie takes to investigating the strangers in earnest. First on his list is a slovenly bounty hunter, followed shortly by a tall, cool, red-headed woman lawyer named Em Hoffer, who claims to be working for the heiress’s mother. But Okie’s troubles have just begun when a body-dropped clear out of the sky-lands in an oat field outside of town. Then Okie himself narrowly escapes an attack on his life, and the search for the killer becomes personal. Just as Okie turns his attention to the third stranger-dashing, mysterious, and very suspicious-the man takes off with his easy prey. The sultry city of Veracruz in Mexico is far out of Okie’s jurisdiction, but he must follow the trail there, lest a killer get away with murder again.

Enemy Within. Christianne Heggan. 2000. 408p. Mira Books. When Rachel inherits her adopted family’s vineyard, her sister sets out to challenge the will by uncovering the identity of Rachel’s birth mother. Determined to thwart her sister’s plans, Rachel joins in the search, which leads her into the world of organized crime and exposes her to someone determined to sabotage her business and her life. Thirty years ago, a woman accused of murdering her husband placed her newborn daughter on a convent’s steps, then staged her own death. She leaves behind a mystery that would return three decades later to rock a family.

Joe Soll

Evil Exchange. Lori Paris & Joe Soll. 2007. 296p. Wingspan Press. Imagine you are adopted, and find out that as an infant, you were sold on the black market by a notorious baby seller who falsified your birth certificate. Your world is shattered. Your life has been a lie. The truth seems unattainable unless you can find someone to help you get back what was stolen, your real identity. Todd Walters is a man on such a quest. With the aid of a former private investigator, Boots Beaumont, the two men will begin a search into the unknown. FBI agent Frank “Red” Barron, discovers a modern-day baby-selling ring that leads him on a cross-country chase to find those responsible for the horrific crimes. Specializing in private adoptions, Sheila Stiles is a ruthless attorney who caters to the wealthy. She leads a diabolical crew who will stop at nothing, including murder, to give their customers what they want. On a fateful collision course, these two powerful and parallel stories will culminate in an emotionally charged ending that will both enthrall and engage down to the very last word. Based on many true experiences and current events torn from today’s headlines, Evil Exchange is a chilling novel that exposes the dark side of adoption and will keep you on the edge of your chair from start to finish.

Face of Death, The. Cody McFadyen. 2007. 464p. Bantam. From Kirkus Reviews: A scarred FBI agent faces her own past as well as a strange teen’s demons as she tracks a bloodthirsty serial killer. Smoky Barrett has her hands full. Not only is she grieving her own brutal rape and the murder of her husband and daughter, she’s raising silent Bonnie, the ten-year-old daughter of a friend who was also the killer’s victim. When her boss offers her a chance to leave the field and teach, she is tempted. She wants to give both Bonnie and herself a chance at recovery. But she’s still on the job when the call comes in. A teenage girl, covered in blood and holding a gun to her head, asks for Smoky. Smoky talks young Sarah into relinquishing the gun, and removes her from the home where her family has been slaughtered. But not before promising to read the girl’s diary, which details a mysterious man she calls “The Stranger.” Has there really been a stalker bringing tragedy to Sarah’s life? When other bodies start stacking up, Smoky has no choice but to continue with the case, despite the cost to her own recovery, her adopted daughter and her coterie of loyal friends. In this follow-up to Shadow Man (2006), the author never strays far from standard serial-killer formula. Smoky may no longer be beautiful, but she’s a classically spunky heroine, as well as an ace with a gun. Her elusive prey is a chilling monster who leaves messages (“THIS PLACE = JUSTICE”) in his victims’ blood and is smart enough to confuse the FBI’s profilers. All the expected thrills in a readable package. About the Author: Cody McFadyen lives with his family in California. Visit the Author’s website.

Falling Through the Cracks. JLC Pulliam. 2009. 302p. BookSurge Publishing. What if you were a speech therapist responsible for two elementary school girls who couldn’t talk and you discovered something horrible had happened to make them that way? Then what if you found out they couldn’t speak because of you? Falling Through the Cracks is a novel about rebuilding a family after a murder. Solving two mysteries (one about adoption and one about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and falling in love are not part of Angel Martin’s plans when the Arizona speech therapist and Improv actress moves to Georgia. However, hearing a child chanting in the dark, “The knife is in his back. The blood is on the floor,” catapults her into action.

False Conception. Stephen Greenleaf. 1994. (A John Marshall Tanner Mystery). Otto Penzler Books. Stuart and Millicent Colbert can’t conceive a child, but they have the resources to hire a surrogate mother. San Francisco private eye Marsh Tanner is employed to investigate the surrogate, Greta Hammond. The catch: Hammond must never know the identity of the Colberts nor that she’s being investigated. Meanwhile, the detective’s significant other is pushing him toward parenthood, a step that, at age 48, Tanner believes impossible. Complications arise on both fronts when Tanner infiltrates Hammond’s life and—against all better judgment—her bed. When Tanner finds a distant connection between the surrogate and Mr. Colbert, Greta, now pregnant with the Colbert’s child, disappears. Tanner is the only one who knows all the elements of the case, and he’s forced to make Solomon-like decisions as he factors in his own confused emotions regarding parenthood, the welfare of the unborn child, and the lives of the three adult principals. Tanner novels are never just mysteries; Greenleaf always weaves in a larger human dilemma, and here he does it more successfully than ever before. This tenth installment is easily the best of the Tanner series. Too many mysteries end with the scent of cordite in the air; here we end with a tear in the eye. It’s a nice change. — Wes Lukowsky (Booklist)

False Prophet. Faye Kellerman. 1992. 367p. (A Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus Mystery). William Morrow & Co. When LAPD detective Peter Decker arrives at the Valley Canyon Spa Resort, its beautiful owner, Lilah, the daughter of Hollywood legend Davida Eversong, appears to have been beaten and raped, and her mother’s jewels and late father’s unpublished memoirs are missing from her safe. To thwart Lilah’s growing obsession with him, Peter shunts her off on his partner Margie while he concentrates on possible perps, including her three doctor brothers, a slow-witted stablehand, and one of the spa’s aerobic instructors. Two deaths later, Peter is convinced that Lilah staged the rape and hid the gems, but then who stole the memoirs, and why? Lilah’s ex-husband leads him to a former Eversong employee who knows many family secrets, and Peter uncovers another identity brouhaha. Eventually, with some psychological input from his rabbi and his pregnant wife Rina, Peter sorts through a tangle of viperous relationships to close the case. Histrionic plot, not helped much by Kellerman’s B-movie prose. Like Day of Atonement, Milk and Honey, etc., this comes to life only when discussing Judaica, which takes a backseat here to adoption procedures and assorted sexual preferences. — From Kirkus Reviews; ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Fatal Fashione, The. Karen Harper. 2005. 304p. (An Elizabeth I Mystery). St Martin’s Press. From Kirkus Reviews: Queen Elizabeth I returns to her role as detective when her royal starcher, Hannah von Hoven, is found drowned in a tub. Meg Milligrew, Elizabeth’s strewing herb mistress of the privy chamber, had gathered two sackfuls of poisonous cuckoo-pint roots in the hopes of sharing in the profits from the fashionable taste for enormous starched ruffs. Meg planned to sell Hannah the roots to produce liquid starch; unfortunately, Meg finds Hannah’s drowned corpse shortly after a public dispute between the two women about Hannah’s penny-pinching ways has given the herb mistress an obvious motive. Simultaneously, Sir Thomas Gresham, the man the Queen relies on for financial management of the kingdom, shows an unusual reluctance to comply with the Queen’s request to visit her royal starchers and endorse the economic benefits of the new fashion. Gresham’s uneasiness turns to panic when his adopted daughter Marie goes missing and then is found suffering from amnesia near Hannah’s business. The Queen convenes her Privy Plot Council to find the real murderer, protect the burgeoning starch industry, save Meg from arrest and help Gresham and his family get back on their feet. A sympathetic portrait of the Queen living up to her various loyalties, public and private, but the mystery takes second place to Harper’s focus on Elizabethan culture and her character’s romances.

Fever Kill, The. Brian Malloy. 2007. 250p. Creeping Hemlock Press. Crease is going back to Hangtree. It’s where his father met ruin in the face of a scandal involving the death of a kidnapped girl. It’s where Crease was beaten, jailed, and kicked clear of the town line ten years earlier. Now he’s back. He s been undercover for so long that most days he feels more like a mobster than a cop. He doesn’t mind much; the corrupt life is easier to stomach than dealing with a wife who can’t understand him, a son who hates him, and half-dozen adopted kids he can’t even name anymore. He’s also just gotten his drug dealing, knife-wielding, psycho boss Tucco’s mistress pregnant. A fine time to decide to settle old scores and resolve a decade-old mystery. With Tucco hot on his tail, Crease has to find his answers fast. Who kidnapped little Mary? Who really killed her? Was his own father guilty? And what happened to the paltry fifteen grand ransom that might spell salvation to half the desperate population of Hangtree? The town still has a taste for his blood and secrets it wants to keep. But Crease has other plans, and he trusts that his raging fever for revenge will get him through. About the Author: Tom Piccirilli is the author of sixteen novels, including A Choir of Ill Children, November Mourns, Headstone City, The Dead Letters, and The Midnight Roadall. He’s a ITW nominee and and a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Field of Death. Stephen Overholser. 1977. Doubleday. Young Aaron Mills fell in love with Sadie Ann the first time he saw her, but he was soon to look upon his meeting with her as the beginning of a long and perilous journey. From the start, fate had seemed to tear them apart. Sadie Ann was the adopted daughter of Mrs. Armbrister, the wealthiest and most eccentric widow in Denver, and mistress of the fabulous Armbrister mansion. Infuriated by Aaron’s persistence, she kept a jailkeeper’s watch on her daughter. But it was finally Sadie Ann herself who, although she had secretly returned Aaron’s ardent love, fled, claiming that they must part forever. That night the awful murders began. Aaron could not forget. Even as the years passed he knew that Sadie Ann must be alive somewhere, and stubbornly believed that he must save her life and redeem her innocence. But Denver was a seething frontier city full of barely tamed men, and the roads out into the wilds, where any lawlessness could sink from view, were lonely and treacherous. Nothing could prepare Aaron for what he was to find.

Find Me. Carol O’Connell. 2006. p. (A Mallory Novel). GP Putnam’s Sons. From Kirkus Reviews: Plenty of creepy goings-on along Route 66, including missing children and serial killing. Call her “Mallory.” Just one name. It fits, for blonde, beautiful, brilliant as she is, she’s tight-lipped and tough. All action and results. Sending her ace detective back onto the mean streets, O’Connell (Winter House, 2004, etc.) makes her even more intriguing than in any of the eight previous Mallory novels. From the get-go, she’s on the run. In her own Upper West Side apartment, the police discover a corpse—Savannah Sirus, shot in the heart—and by her side, a cryptic note: “Love is the death of me.” No way Mallory could be the perp—she’s a legendary sleuth, envy of the department. But still, gun freak, control addict, computer whiz and orphan raised up wild in the urban jungle, she’s no Joe Friday, but a truly strange bird. Another corpse turns up, mutilated in the Windy City “with one arm extended, pointing down the road to say: Follow Me.” Mallory hits Route 66 and gets her kicks showing up FBI agents and other bumblers, all the while questing to connect the homicide dots. On the highway, she’s drawn into the wake of a caravan of cars that soon figures into the labyrinthine plot. For they’re a funeral procession of sorts, kinfolk of packs of missing kids. Stopping at roadside eateries, they flash photos of the disappeared and search for clues, and then it’s on the road again, relentlessly seeking. “Relentless” has become synonymous with O’Connell’s series. She gets all the genre stuff right: the cops’ jaded inside jokes, the forensics jargon, the violence. Mainly, though, she’s masterful at revealing the detective mind. Very smart murder fare complete with a rain-swept mood and psychological heat. © 2006, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Other Titles in the “Mallory” Series: Mallory’s Oracle (1994); The Man Who Cast Two Shadows (1995); Killing Critics (1996); Stone Angel (1997); Shell Game (1999); Crime School (2002); Dead Famous (2003); and Winter House (2004).

Fingerprint, The. Patricia Wentworth. 1959. 254p. (A Miss Silver Mystery). Hodder & Stoughton (UK). When she found the body of her beloved Uncle Jonathan, Georgina’s mind went blank. Instinctively, she stooped to pick up the revolver, thus becoming the prime suspect. For Georgina stood to inherit a large fortune when her uncle died—if he didn’t decide to leave it to his adopted niece, the seemingly innocent Mirrie Field.

First Excellence, The: Fa-ling’s Map. Donna Carrick. 2009. 374p. BookSurge Publishing. From Kirkus Discoveries: When Fa-ling was a child in Guangxi, China, her birth mother—fearful that her ruthless mother-in-law would kill Fa-ling and her newborn sister—abandoned the girls on a park bench before committing suicide. Fa-ling and her sister Daphne lived at a wretched orphanage where Fa-ling tolerated sexual abuse in an unspoken trade for extra food for her and Daphne. Readers later discover that their father’s heart was broken by their disappearance, and though he was too weak to stand up to his insufferable mother, he continued to search for them unbeknownst to Fa-ling and Daphne. Forward to the present, when 21-year-old Fa-ling is living with her loving adoptive family in Canada, but feeling lost, tentative and confused about her future. Determined to resolve her feelings by revisiting her past, she returns to China. For safety reasons, she doesn’t go alone, but travels with a tour guide and a group of five couples who ironically are going to China to adopt a child. Soon after their arrival, a gruesome murder occurs at their hotel and Fa-ling unknowingly stumbles into a three-way plot involving child kidnapping, organ theft, political intrigue and government coverups. Enter detectives Wang and Cheng, two wonderfully rendered characters who must toe the tenuous line between uncovering the truth and risking reprisal from governmental higher-ups. The other compelling storylines quickly unfold, and Carrick deftly and seamlessly weaves these plots together. As with many other mysteries, there’s a lengthy list of characters and some readers may feel confused by the array. Though there are some lovely descriptions, there are also some jarring metaphors and similes which disrupt the narrative flow—“Her voice, never soothing at the best of times, ripped through the humid afternoon with the intensity of a chicken being plucked” and “The water shimmered, whispering like a friend in a new dress.” Still, the conclusion is pleasantly unpredictable.

First Family. David Baldacci. 2009. 464p. Grand Central Publishing. It began with what seemed like an ordinary children’s birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games and gifts. This party, however, was far from ordinary. It was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat. And it ended with a daring kidnapping ... which immediately turned into a national security nightmare. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell were not looking to become involved. As former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, they had no reason to be. The FBI doesn’t want them interfering. But years ago, Sean King saved the First Lady’s husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now, Sean is the one person the First Lady trusts, and she presses Sean and Michelle into the desperate search to rescue the abducted child. With Michelle still battling her own demons, and forces aligned on all sides against her and Sean, the two are pushed to the absolute limit. In the race to save an innocent victim, the line between friend and foe will become impossible to define ... or defend. About the Author: David Baldacci lives with his family in Virginia. He and his wife have founded the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America. He invites you to visit him at www.david-baldacci.com and his foundation at http://www.wishyouwellfoundation.org, and to look into its program to spread books across America at www.FeedingBodyandMind.com.

Fixed in His Folly. David J Walker. 1995. 262p. St Martin’s Press. When knife-wielding street punks warn Chicago PI Malachy Foley against “bein’ even close to happy,” the message isn’t about Mal’s state of mind. Harriet “Happy” Mallory, a high powered Chicago attorney with political ambitions, has just hired Mal to find her son, placed for adoption thirty-one years ago. Seems there’s more here than just the late-blooming maternal interest Harriet claims. He finds the man, now a Jesuit priest with a troubled past and troublesome enemies, and becomes involved in a case of revenge and murder.

Fountain at the Center of the World, The. Robert Newman. 2003. 340p. Soft Skull Press. The three-strand narrative of this lively thriller starts with Chano Salgado, a reclusive young widower being chased by police and soldiers for blowing up pipelines that were draining the local groundwater. Meanwhile, in London, PR flack Evan Hatch is dying from leukemia. Hoping to find a bone marrow donor, he tracks down his long-lost brother in Mexico. In the third strand, Salgado’s 14-year-old son, given up for adoption, goes on his own journey to find his father - a trip that will tie together all three strands in an unforgettable ending. An intricately plotted political thriller, The Fountain at the Center of the World is based on exhaustive research and the author’s compelling mix of political analysis and human compassion.

Fresh Kills. Carolyn Wheat. 1995. 236p. Berkley Prime Crime. From the brightly lit world of criminal justice to the shadowy underworld of blackmarket babies—this engrossing new novel by Edgar Award-nominee Carolyn Wheat presents a new kind of challenge for lawyer Cass Jameson. When Cass agrees to represent Amber—who will be giving up her baby to a well-heeled, childless couple—she expects it to be a routine adoption. It’s not. Just three weeks after giving birth, Amber changes her mind. The adoptive parents counter with a lawsuit. And Cass is caught in a sinking pool of guilt and suspicion—when Amber’s dead body is found in the Staten Island swamplands known as... Fresh Kills. From the author of Dead Man’s Thought.

Genuine Lies. Nora Roberts. 1991. 521p. San Val. She is the last of the movie goddesses, and the greatest: a smoky-voiced sex symbol who clawed her way up the ladder to two Oscars and a Tony, four husbands and a legion of lovers. Her beauty is staggering, her power awesome. There is no secret, no lie, no scandal she doesn’t know. Now, still in the spotlight after fifty years, Eve Benedict has decided to write her memoirs—no holds barred. All Hollywood begs her not to. But Eve has her reasons. And she has handpicked her biographer. She has transported twenty-eight-year-old Julia Summers, already renowned for her skill and integrity as a writer, from a quiet Connecticut existence to glitzy Beverly Hills. Lovely, self-sufficient, and proudly professional, Julia hates the limelight but loves her work—and the home it built for the ten-year-old son she’s raising alone. How can she refuse this chance of a lifetime? How can she know how dramatically her hard-won peace will be shattered? Among the beautiful people in Eve’s entourage is her beloved stepson, crime novelist Paul Winthrop, the child she herself could never have. Behind his elegance and sexy good looks simmers a resolve to kill Eve’s tell-all story—and a desire for Julia that spells danger for her carefully guarded heart. But danger of a far deadlier kind is already stalking Julia and her book. First comes a series of anonymous menacing notes. Then her house is ransacked, her interview tapes rifled. For as an unlikely bond forms between Julia and Eve and the legendary star gradually reveals layers of her fantastic life and its vivid cast—the glamorous, the famous, the passionate, and the perverse—she is keeping one secret for last. It is one that will change Julia’s life—and could cut it brutally short.

Gone Tomorrow: A Reacher Novel. Lee Child. 2009. 432p. (Jack Reacher Series #13). Delacorte Press. New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t. Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now. Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan ... from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell—and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed. In a novel that slams through one hairpin surprise after another, Lee Child unleashes a thriller that spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America ... and for Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, it’s a mystery with only one answer—the kind that comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye. About the Author: Lee Child is the author of thirteen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, The Hard Way, and #1 bestsellers Bad Luck and Trouble and Nothing to Lose. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. Child, a native of England and a former television director, lives in New York City, where he is at work on his fourteenth Jack Reacher thriller.

Green Lake. SK Epperson. 1996. 263p. Donald I Fine Books. From Kirkus Reviews: Summertime in that bucolic retreat, Green Lake, Kansas, and the living is easy—if you don’t mind the assortment of perverts and grotesques that Epperson left out of The Neighborhood (1995). Reeling from the suicide of her husband, anthropology professor Madeleine Heron accepts her sister Jacqueline’s offer of a cabin in Green Lake. The nearest neighbors, Sherman and Gudrun Tanner, like to dig in their yard (and other people’s) so much that Jacqueline calls them Earthworm and Mole Woman. A little further off, there’s unemployed Ronnie Lyman, who’s just dropped his youngest daughter off at his mother’s so he and his wife can pretend she’s been kidnapped and angle for publicity and sympathy cash. Of course Madeleine can’t forget Bruce Beckworth, the good old boy whose determined advances have to be beaten back by conservation officer Dale Russell, whose smooth good looks and political connections (his aunt is governor of Kansas) would make him a great catch if he weren’t a murderous child molester. So there’s nobody left for Madeleine, “dying of boredom and anxiety,” to take up with but Dale’s fellow-officer, Eris Renard, a scarred Sauk-Fox Indian she somehow kindles a romance with despite her diffidence and his sullen reserve. Eris has been looking for years for the birth mother who put him up for adoption, and he finds her just as his affair with Madeleine is at its steamiest. Naturally, she turns out to be just another threat to her peace of mind—a wealthy, possessive artist who wants Eris to come and live with her in Santa Fe and isn’t crazy about his fling with a white woman. This volatile cargo of creeps mostly broods on their injuries and resolves to avenge them; the final tally will be five fatalities, no arrests. Even so, Epperson’s seventh formula thriller is atypically sunny, with only scattered clouds and little real menace to the heroine. The rest of the cast is too busy killing each other off. Copyright © 1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Half Broken Things. Morag Joss. 2005. 320p. Delacorte Press. From Kirkus Reviews: Intriguing interior narrative by British crime novelist Joss explores the deviant pleasures of the solitary elderly housesitter. At age 64, Jean, a housesitter for the Town and Country agency, has reached retirement age. Her final job as caretaker of the Walden Manor in Bath allows her to take stock of her paltry spinster existence as an unloved, adopted daughter who creates imaginary characters who care about her. When Jean accidentally shatters a teapot full of keys, she is able to unlock rooms in the beautiful old house where she will reside from January to September; in her extreme loneliness, she begins to assume the identity of the inhabitants, shedding her old clothes and inventing a grown son she once gave up for adoption and for whose return she advertises in a women’s magazine. Two-bit hustler Michael answers the ad, bringing with him a young pregnant woman he has just met, Steph, who is fleeing her abusive boyfriend, and the misfits make themselves happily at home over several months. Joss further complicates the mix by introducing the miraculous birth of the baby in the house, and then its mysterious death, followed by Steph’s determination to become a babysitter for a toddler whose mother is a divorced solicitor. Yet Michael’s past as a thief of religious objects catches up with him when a provincial curate comes to visit, and the threesome’s idyllic front of normalcy collapses abruptly. These are damaged characters in an unforgiving class-conscious society, and despite the hiatus of grace they find together, Joss punishes Jean for her lifelong docility and selflessness. The ending, depressingly, slides into a doomed futility. A grim, courageous work that crosses into dark, interior regions American readers rarely dare to tread.

Hardcase. Bill Pronzini. 1995. 215p. Delacorte. Pronizini’s nameless detective, newly married and back from a honeymoon, thought this case would be easy. The model turned millionaire wanted to know who her real parents were, and why she had been given up for adoption as an infant. But that was before he began to discover the ugly truth, the cover-up and alot of very angry people.

Hear No Evil. James Grippando. 2004. 320p. HarperCollins. Miami attorney Jack Swyteck is involved in the most explosive criminal trial of his career—a case that starts with a murder on a military base and concludes with a shocking surprise that will change Jack’s life forever. A beautiful woman comes to see Jack and begs him to represent her. She says she’s about to be arrested for the murder of her husband, an officer stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Having no expertise in military law and sensing that the woman isn’t telling him the entire truth, Jack turns her down. Then she drops a bombshell: She claims she’s the adoptive mother of Jack’s biological son—a child he’s never met. Either Jack must represent her or he’ll never see the boy. So Jack agrees, but with great foreboding. He has an unreliable client—a blackmailer who just might be a murderer—and he has to travel to Gitmo and on to Havana to tussle with people who clearly have a lot to hide. This is a case with as many twists and turns as it has unanswered questions, and the personal toll on Jack won’t end until he’s forced to confront the ultimate surprise witness in a trial that rocks the city of Miami. In signature Grippando style, Hear No Evil is an intricate, fast-paced, and captivating thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Hearing, The. James Mills. 1998. 416p. Warner Books. Judge Gus Parham is Alabama’s favorite son, a man with a soaring career and a perfect marriage. To sweeten perfection, he has just been nominated to the United States Supreme Court by his old friend, the nation’s President. But Gus has an enemy no man has ever successfully crossed: Ernesto Vicaro, an organized crime leader who, thanks to Gus’s courage and resolve, is an inmate of America’s prison system. Gus’s political opponents uncover a daughter from a pregnancy Gus thought his wife, then his fiancee, had aborted twelve years before. The existence of Samantha, a lovely young girl with a troubled past, unleashes a media feeding frenzy that rocks his nomination. Gus has to handle a vacillating White House, unmerciful members of Congress, and a beautiful lobbyist whose agenda of compassion is fueled by a calculated ruthlessness. Then, beset by forces from both the left and the right, Gus and his wife, Michelle, are plunged into a world of blackmail, suicide, and terror. Now the nominee must make the most difficult decision of his life. Faced with two choices—to embrace a lie or do something he knows is desperately, unalterably wrong—he will make an astonishing decision.

Indian Killer. Sherman Alexie. 1996. 256p. Grove-Atlantic. A murderer is stalking and scalping white men in Seattle. While this so-called Indian Killer terrorizes the city, its Native American population is thrown into turmoil. John Smith, an Indian adopted as a newborn baby into a white family, is increasingly dissatisfied with his life and dreams of the existence he might have led on the reservation—he is gently descending into madness. In his search for connection he meets Marie, a strident young student at the local university who is isolated from her tribe; she is highly educated, but not in her own traditions. Marie is particularly enraged with people such as Jack Wilson, a local ex-cop and now a popular mystery writer who passes himself off as part Indian in a desperate attempt at acceptance. Jack is determined to write about the brutal killings in his next novel, a novel that he believes will truly reveal what it is like to be Indian. With each new murder, the city is gripped by fear, and hate crimes perpetrated by white men against the Native American community grow increasingly violent. As the murderer searches for his latest victim, and the Indian population of Seattle is filled with a strange combination of fear and relief, Indian Killer builds to an unexpected and terrifying climax.

Innocent Blood. PD James. 1980. Faber & Faber (UK). Innocent Blood is a novel that goes far beyond the bounds of the mystery story to explore the themes of the growth of love and the search for identity. Philippa Palfrey, adopted as a child, exercises her legal right to apply for a copy of her birth certificate when she becomes eighteen. Although she has always had a fantasy of being the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic father and now dead mother, she soon learns the shocking truth about her parents—and finds that her mother is about to be released from prison. With this knowledge, Philippa moves into an alien world that is to prove more dangerous and terrifying than any she could imagine. For there is someone else interested in her mother’s release—someone who had dedicated his life to seeking out and destroying her. [Dramatised by PBS’s Mystery series.]

Inspector Queen’s Own Case: November Song. Ellery Queen. 1956. 312p. Simon & Schuster. A quarter of a century’s requests from many thousands of Ellery Queen fans all over the world have finally borne fruit. At long last, here is a full-fledged murder mystery investigated and solved by Inspector Richard Queen without so much as a single deduction’s help from his celebrated son. But Inspector Queen’s Own Case is far more than a baffling murder mystery. It is also a tender, understanding story of middle-aged people everywhere who find themselves put out to pasture on a pension to face an empty old age. Ellery’s father was spending the summer with friends at their beach house on the Connecticut shore. It should have been a golden summer, but all the Inspector could think about was his enforced uselessness. The old pro had been retired—the Administrative Code made no exceptions when a New York police officer reached the age of 63. How was he to occupy the endless days? He was still vigorous, still useful. A man needed more than security. He needed something to do. Richard Queen found one man’s answer on Nair Island, and he was soon plunged into the most challenging and dangerous case of his long career. And he found something else, too—that life can even be sweet at 63. Her name was Jessie Sherwood, a registered nurse in her late 40s, lonely, still pretty, and all woman. Jessie had been hired by the blueblood Humffreys to take charge of their newborn infant. When queer, frightening things began to happen in that multimillionaire home… A helpless baby, a unique romance, and a tensely plotted tale of multiple murder mounting to a shocking climax make Inspector Queen’s Own Case one of the most superb novels to come from Ellery Queen’s typewriter.

It’s Raining Men. Naomi Rand. 2005. 229p. (An Emma Price Mystery). HarperCollins Publishers. From Kirkus Reviews: Emma Price won’t have to take any more attitude from her boss and friend Dawn Prescott: The head attorney of the New York Capital Crimes Division has been murdered. A phone call from Dawn took Emma to a rendezvous where she was in the perfect position to get mistaken for Dawn and kidnapped. Once they realized their mistake, the kidnappers soon corrected it in spades. Unfortunately for them, neither one survived their victim for long. Now Emma, lead investigator for Capital Crimes, has to figure out which of the hundreds of people who wanted her old friend dead actually made good on the wish. As usual, however, her caseload is complicated by several supporting nightmares. Arthur Nevins, a lifer who claims that his murder conviction nine years ago was coerced, ditches Capital Crimes as his law team in favor of fancy-pants attorney Jason Samuels. Emma’s ex-husband Will, not content to be up for an Oscar for Best Editing, has evidently set his sights beyond his trophy second wife. Dawn’s father, a Connecticut senator, is as apoplectic as Emma is astonished when they learn that Dawn has named Emma guardian of her adopted daughter. And Emma’s biological offspring are kicking up a fuss as well. Amazingly, Emma (Stealing for a Living, 2003, etc.) not only establishes the unexpected connections that solve her juicy if not very mysterious cases, but keeps her sanity and sometimes her good humor.

Jesse’s Girl. Gary Morgenstein. 2009. 340p. CreateSpace. How much should a parent sacrifice for a troubled child? In Morgenstein’s new thriller, Jesse’s Girl, the answer is—anything. Anchored around a floundering father-son relationship, finding roots and re-uniting vanished bonds, the novel about teen addiction and adoption follows a desperate father’s search for his son, who has run away from a drug program to find his biological sister in Kentucky. Jesse’s Girl opens as a jarring phone wakes lifelong Brooklynite Teddy Mentor well after midnight. It’s the Montana wilderness program saying that his 16-year-old adopted son has vanished—and they haven’t a clue where he’s gone. Only two weeks ago, Jesse had been taken to the program by escorts to deal with substance abuse problems. Jeopardizing his flagging PR job in New York, Mentor rushes across the country to find Jesse, who is off on his own quest: to find Theresa, the sister he’s never known. When Teddy finally discovers Jesse at a bus stop in Illinois, he is torn between sending him back or joining his son on a journey to find this girl in Kentucky. He decides to go. They become embroiled in a grisly crime when Theresa’s abusive husband Beau attacks her—Jesse stabs the big beast of a man, leaving him for dead. Given Jesse’s misdemeanor criminal record, Teddy can’t go to the authorities without risking his son’s arrest. However, Beau is not dead, merely wounded, and he hunts them down, thirsty for revenge. Teddy, Jesse and Theresa flee across the Bluegrass State with Beau in hot pursuit. Seeking safety but finding trouble, their story leads them to an ultimately shattering question: is Theresa really Jesse’s sister or has he been scammed?

Jury of One. David Ellis. 2004. 400p. Putnam Publishing Group. In Jury of One, Shelly Trotter, the daughter of the state’s governor and a children’s-rights advocate, is thrust into a world in which she’s completely unschooled—the criminal court. The defendant is a seventeen-year-old former client who is accused of killing a cop. Shelly soon learns that this boy was caught in the middle of an undercover operation to trap corrupt officers. But what was his role in the sting? The target or the bait? And what does the prosecution really have against him? Then comes the shocker: The kid says he is the son she gave up in a private adoption kept hush-hush by her father, who had political ambitions beyond their small town. As the evidence mounts, Shelly finds that nothing—not legal ethics, nor her father’s re-election campaign—will stop her from keeping her son off death row-for with this client, she is truly a jury of one.

Keeper of Dreams, The. Peter Shann Ford. 2000. 304p. Simon & Schuster. Australia’s ancient Aboriginal traditions and myths prove to be both powerful and real in The Keeper of Dreams, a deeply involving and evocative thriller in which contemporary greed confronts age-old taboos. Deep in the central desert of the Australian Outback, a sacred stone that contains codes and carvings of an Aboriginal group’s most powerful creation stories is stolen. If the stone is not recovered and the thieves not punished, Aboriginal elders know their people will die. And so, one by one, the three men who carried out the theft fall victim to an ancient justice, a ritual in which the victim is literally “sung” to death. The man who ordered the theft, however, remains outside the elders’ power. To get to him, they must choose a ritual spirit-assassin—a kudaitja. Dr. Robert Erhard was raised in Australia by a white couple who adopted him when he was only a baby. He is a full-blooded Aborigine, one of Australia’s Stolen Generations, now working in Houston, Texas, where he is a scientist and expert in interplanetary robotics. In the midst of his very “civilized” world, Robert is visited by an entity from his past who summons him home on a mission to avenge and save his people by recovering the stolen artifact. It is an ancient call that Robert has heard before, first when he was a child, and it signals a journey-a spiritual and physical ordeal-in which he must abandon everything he has become to honor his true identity, as Tjilkamata, his people’s keeper of dreams, protector of all their secrets. It is his legacy and his fate to remain faithful to his people and their traditions, no matter how enticing or powerful the lure of his modern life. The man behind the theft of the sacred artifact is Owen Bird, a ruthless and bullying multibillionaire industrialist who believes, because of his great wealth and power, that he is above the law. However, forces beyond his control begin to emerge when he is critically injured on an Outback buffalo hunt. Airlifted to a hospital emergency room, he has his first experience of the terrifying powers of the men who seek him and the stolen artifact. As ancient lore propels Robert deeper into the heart of the vast Australian Outback in pursuit of his prey, Owen Bird summons his own assassin to protect himself. The ensuing duel, matching the forces of ancient sorcery against modern technology and tactics, is both horrific and mesmerizing.

Kidnapped. Jan Burke. 2006. 384p. (Irene Kelly Mysteries). Simon & Schuster. From Publishers Weekly: At the start of Edgar-winner Burke’s well-crafted 10th novel of suspense (after 2005’s Bloodlines), sociopathic killer Cleo Smith has just murdered a graphic artist, Richard Fletcher, who was a member of a large, bizarre California family, but Smith’s motive for the killing remains obscure. Five years later, Fletcher’s adopted son has been wrongfully convicted of the crime, and Burke’s resourceful and compassionate reporter heroine, Irene Kelly, has written a story about missing children that has prompted a host of inquiries from desperate relatives who have lost their own children. When more bodies turn up and further clues point to involvement of Fletcher family members, Kelly, aided by her police detective husband, Frank Harriman, puts her life on the line to exonerate the innocent prisoner and uncover the disturbing secrets at the heart of the Fletcher clan. The many plot twists should keep readers turning the pages, even if the windup is a little improbable. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Killed in Fringe Time. William L DeAndrea. 1995. 236p. (A Matt Cobb Mystery). Simon & Schuster. As the clock approached four on a warm Friday afternoon, Matt Cobb, network vice-president in charge of special projects, debated his options. He could bolt from his office in Manhattan for an early start to a long weekend, or continue to toil over the paperwork that had been sitting on his desk for far too long. But as the network’s youngest executive, Cobb saw his duty and buried his nose in a heap of spreadsheets. Moments later Richard Bentyne burst into his office and Matt Cobb knew he should have hit the highway. In the late-night talk-show wars, Richard Bentyne is a ruthless samurai whose whopping forty-five-million-dollar contract is shadowed only by the size of his ego. The network brought him on board to battle Letterman and Leno, and he has come to ask Cobb to go to Kennedy International to pick up his secret weapon—the “mountain man.” Clement Bates, the ultrawealthy and intensely eccentric mountain hermit, hasn’t set foot on civilized soil in thirty-five years and is making his first public appearance on Bentyne’s show. America, however, never gets to see Bates’s debut. Television’s favorite talk-show host has been canceled—forever—and Cobb’s newest special project is to find the killer and protect the Network.

Killing Critics. Carol O’Connell. 1996. 308p. (A Mallory Novel). GP Putnam’s Sons. From Kirkus Reviews: The murder of artist Dean Starr, an inoffensive mediocrity stabbed at a reception at Avril Koozeman’s trendy gallery, would be no big deal to anyone—other than fans of the more outré varieties of performance art (the body, labeled with a card reading “DEAD,” fools dozens of visitors before a jaundiced rent-a-cop realizes how accurate the label is)—if the performance-art angle, coupled with a much more explicit clue, didn’t point the finger at an unsolved 12-year-old case. Back in the glory days of Inspector Louis Markowitz, up-and-coming artist Peter Ariel and ballet hopeful Aubry Gilette had been hacked to death with an axe and their bodies scrambled together in an even more ghoulish aesthetic exercise. Markowitz is dead now, but his adopted daughter, Sgt. Kathy Mallory, is determined to reopen the case, and nothing—not the intransigence of art critic J.L. Quinn; or the antics of columnist Andrew Bliss, who camps out on Bloomingdale’s roof with a bullhorn as a fashion-advisor terrorist; or the pretensions of critic-turned-Public Works Committee head Emma Sue Hollaran, liposucked within an inch of her life; or the opposition of her corrupt boss, Chief Harry Blakely—is going to stop her. Mallory displays such diverse skills—the former street kid is a computer genius who dominates press conferences, never sleeps, dresses in a trice, and offers to deck an aging ballet teacher—that she’s in danger of becoming a Wild Child paragon. But it’s hard to resist a third case (The Man Who Cast Two Shadows, 1995, etc.) that’s as blazingly original as her first two. © 1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Other Titles in the “Mallory” Series: Mallory’s Oracle (1994); The Man Who Cast Two Shadows (1995); Stone Angel (1997); Shell Game (1999); Crime School (2002); Dead Famous (2003); Winter House (2004); and Find Me (2006).

Kiss of the Bees. J(udith) A Jance. 2000. 389p. Avon Books. In Tucson, twenty years ago, a psychopath named Andrew Carlisle brought blood and terror into the home of Diana Ladd Walker and her family. When Carlisle died in prison, Diana and her husband, ex-county sheriff Brandon Walker, believed their long nightmare was finally over. They were wrong. Their beloved adopted daughter Lani has vanished—a beautiful Native American teenager destined, according to Tohono O’othham legend, to become a woman of great spiritual power. A serial killer is dead, but his malevolence lives on in another—and now the fiend holds Lani’s innocent life in his eager hands. Before he snuffs it out completely, he intends to make his young prisoner —and, more importantly, her parents—suffer a slow and agonizing torture. For only this will avenge his friend and mentor, his dark god, Andrew Carlisle. About the Author: J.A. Jance is the American Mystery Award-winning author of the popular J.P. Beaumont mystery series as well as six previous mysteries featuring Joanna Brady. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, AZ, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, WA.

Last Dance of the Viper. Brian Lysaght. 2001. 447p. Forge. From Publishers Weekly: The latest thriller from veteran suspense writer Lysaght (The Eye of the Beholder) is a distressing step backward, a hybrid of mismatched genre cliches. His tale of ex-pugilist foster brothers Thomas Boyle, a cop, and Miguel Meza, a hitman, who spring into action when their beloved mentor and surrogate father “Patsy” De Marco is murdered, unsatisfyingly cobbles together political thriller, police procedural and Mafia drama. Although fast-moving and never dull, Lysaght’s ungainly narrative also manages to be blunt, unsophisticated and vaguely misogynistic. Almost nothing is left to the reader’s imagination; as soon as we are introduced to the novel’s chief villain, a supercilious ice-queen assassin named Alicia Kent, we’re informed that she is “deeply evil.” Kent, a key member of the inanely named Kensington Dining Council (which seems to have nonironically modeled itself after James Bond’s old archenemy, S.P.E.C.T.R.E.), is directly responsible for De Marco’s death. She kills the old boxing trainer because he’s stumbled across a Paterson, NJ, warehouse where the council secreted a cache of deadly sarin nerve gas, with the aid of local mob boss Angelo Bracca. After De Marco’s body is found at the bottom of a waterfall, the hot-tempered Boyle and nonchalant Meza team up to avenge his death. Along the way, they exchange good-natured taunts, encounter beautiful naval intelligence officer Stephanie Shane and cause a not inconsiderable amount of property damage. They’re also greeted by laughably gratuitous female nudity at every turn (Shane gets most of her clothing torn off in the novel’s climactic action sequence), one of many indications that the book has more in common with tacky, exploitative B-movies than with solid suspense fiction. © Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Listen to the Silence. Marcia Muller. 2000. 289p. (Sharon McCone Series #20). Mysterious Press. For Sharon McCone, when one door opens, another shuts. In the midst of celebrating the joyous wedding of friends, she gets word that her father has suddenly died in San Diego. After making the sad journey home to help scatter his ashes, she also learns that her father requested that she—not any of her four brothers and sisters—be the one to sort through his personal effects. In a cardboard carton marked “Legal Papers,” McCone will discover why. A highly confidential document, long hidden, soon provokes a violent breach between McCone and her mother and sends McCone searching for the truth kept from her about the past. It’s a truth about four friends, a shattered love affair, and a violent murder. It’s a truth that no none wants her to find. Now, from a reservation in Montana to locate Shoshone relatives to tracking down other kin at a sacred Indian lake in northern California, McCone will encounter old family secrets and modern disputes, an environmental lawyer in desperate trouble, and a ruthless developer who’s a bigot to boot. She will feel a widening reservoir of anger and fear opening up between herself and the people she knows and loves best. And when someone tampers with her car to leave her stranded in a hostile landscape and very much alone in a dark inner place, McCone may face both an identity crisis—and a killer—in a case that cuts close to the bone, transforms her soul, and threatens to send her to the grave. By the Same Author: With the revelation of her protagonist’s status as an adoptee, subsequent books in the series address this aspect of the character’s relationship with both her adoptive and birth familes (in Vanishig Point, e.g., McCone’s adoptive and birth mothers meet for the first time): Dead Midnight (2002); The Dangerous Hour (2004); Vanishing Point (2006); The Ever-Running Man (2007); Burn Out (2008); Locked In (2009).

Little Girl Blue: A Novel of Crime. David Cray. 2001. 304p. Carroll & Graf. Everything changes for Lieutenant Julia Brennan, NYPD, on a frigid January morning in Central Park. The commander of a Manhattan North homicide squad, she inspects the body of an unidentified young girl. Naked, her skin blue from the cold, her feet cut and scraped in desperate flight, the grim sight of the dead child in an instant turns Julia Brennan’s priorities upside down. Julia Brennan is tough-minded and hard-boiled, like the story this taut, chilling novel unfolds. Yet she suddenly finds herself willing to risk her promotion and, if necessary, her entire career to give a woefully lost child a name and to apprehend the parties responsible for an appalling crime. Her search takes her into the world of pedophiles and foreign adoption agencies that sell children into slavery—a world where, Julia begins to realize, someone has the jump on her, and is killing the very suspects she is hunting. Striking a devil’s bargain with an undercover cop from the Sex Crimes Unit, a man who himself becomes a prime candidate for the killer, Julia follows a tortuous path until, alone and dismayed, she sees that she has made a terrible, terrible mistake. Now she faces her greatest fear. For Lieutenant Julia Brennan is also the mother of a young daughter.

Little Yellow Dog, A. Walter Mosley. 1996. WW Norton & Co. It’s 1963. Easy Rawlins has given up the street life that has brought him so much trouble and grief. He’s taken on a job as supervising custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School in Watts. For two years he’s been getting up early and going off to work. He wears nice clothes and puts all his energy—and love—into his job and his adopted children. Easy likes his new life, even though he feels empty and a little bored sometimes. But all that is about to change. Easy comes in early one morning to find one of the teachers already in her classroom. She has a dog with her and a story about a husband gone mad. Before he knows what’s happening, the teacher is in his arms. Before the day is over the teacher is gone, leaving Easy with her dog, and the handsomest corpse Easy has ever seen is found in the school garden. That night a second corpse turns up. Easy may have left the streets but he hasn’t been forgotten. The world is changing faster than he can keep up with. The police believe that Easy is involved in the murders. Old enemies are waiting to get even. The principal of the school wants to fire him. His old friends aren’t the same and his new friends might be his death. Easy wants back into his careful little life, but the door is closed. A murderer is running loose somewhere. And a little yellow dog plots revenge.

Lockout. Lillian O’Donnell. 1994. 239p. Putnam Publishing Group. Lieutenant Norah Mulcahaney of New York’s Fourth Homicide Division (Pushover, 1992, etc.) is trying to cope with a clutch of spiky problems. One is the murder of Ben Russell, shot to death in the studio where his fading rock-star brother Bo and his group, the Earth Shakers, were recording the new songs Bo hoped would put him back on top of the charts. Even more worrying is the investigation under way into Norah’s killing of a would-be rapist in Central Park; a vanished gun; the enmity of one or more members of her squad; threatening, anonymous phone calls at home; and, above all, Norah’s fear of a glitch in the adoption process that will at last bring her the child she has longed for. Norah solves the murder with a nervy, imaginative, not always convincing ploy. There are other, more satisfying endings as well in this mostly engrossing, no-frills procedural from a dependable veteran. — From Kirkus Reviews; ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Long Division, The. Derek Nikitas. 2009. 320p. Minotaur Books. An Atlanta housecleaner flees her nowhere life to reunite with the son she gave up for adoption. The teenage boy joins his long-lost mother on an unlawful road trip that proves how much they both have to lose by finding each other. Elsewhere, a deputy must track down the shooter in a drug-related double murder before other investigators discover the deputy’s illicit ties to the case. The killer is an unbalanced college kid hunted by vengeful drug dealers and the police, haunted by loves both dead and forbidden. When the renegade mother and son arrive, past sins and present gambits will ensnare them in the violent endgame between the deputy and the desperate killer. About the Author: Derek Nikita teaches creative writing at Eastern Kentucky University. Pyres, his first novel, was an Edgar nominee.

Look Again. Lisa Scottoline. 2009. 352p. St Martin’s Press. When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a “Have You Seen This Child?” flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can’t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? She investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life—and that of the son she loves. Lisa Scottoline breaks new ground in Look Again, a thriller that’s both heart-stopping and heart-breaking, and sure to have new fans and book clubs buzzing. About the Author: Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author of 15 novels including Lady Killer and Daddy’s Girl. She also writes a weekly column titled, Chick Wit, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She won an Edgar® Award and Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Fun Fearless Fiction” Award. She lives in the Philadelphia area.

Lost Daughters. JM Redmann. 1999. 319p. (A Mickey Knight Mystery). WW Norton & Co Inc. Micky Knight, a bayou-bred and out-of-the-closet New Orleans private investigator, takes on the cases of a widowed mother looking for her daughter and a tough gay boy hunting for his biological mother. These cases stir in Micky a desire to search for her own mother, who abandoned her when she was a young girl. When a young woman patient is murdered at her lover’s clinic, it seems to be just a bizarre coincidence. But then another woman, also a patient, is murdered, suggesting the frightening possibility that these events are more than just random chances. Even more alarming, the killer seems to know too much about the victims. As the killer circles ever closer to Micky—and the lost daughter she is trying to reconnect to her mother—the coincidences become a grisly reality: the one characteristic all the victims share is that they dare to love other women. Redmann once again keeps you at the edge of your seat. About the Author: J. M. Redmann is the author of three other Micky Knight mysteries, most recently Intersection of Law and Desire, a San Francisco Chronicle Editor’s Choice selection.

Love You to Death. Grant Michaels (pseudnym of Michael Mesrobian). 1992. 256p. St Martin’sPress. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and everyone has a sweetheart, except Stan Kraychik, Boston’s sassiest hairdresser. Ever hopeful of meeting Mr. Right, Stan attends a gala reception that culminates in a death by poisoning, and romantic problems take a back seat to murder. The Boston police arrest Stan’s friend Laurett Cole, who then leaves her four-year-old son in Stan’s care. In his quest to free Laurett from suspicion and himself from his ill-mannered ward, Stan finds himself exploring the secrets of a revered Boston institution, the Gladys Gardner Chocolate Company. There, along with the sweet edibles, he finds an assortment of not-so-delectable murder.

Loved to Death: A Different Kind of Love Story. Rosa Elmore Ferguson. 2007. 84p. Wasteland Press. Adoption brings about a set of issues unknown to any other social group, not only to the adoptee but to the adoptive parents as well. Death shouldn’t be one of those issues. Read about Morosa Denise McKinley’s life as an adoptee and her adoptive parents; one who loved too much and one who could not love enough. By the Same Author: Loved to Death: The Truth Unfolds (2009). Visit the Author’s website.

Magnolia Moon. JoAnne Ross. 2003. 384p. Pocket Books. From Publishers Weekly: Readers seduced by the first two books in JoAnn Ross’s Callahan Brothers trilogy (Blue Bayou; River Road) will be equally charmed by Magnolia Moon. When charismatic Nate Callahan, the mayor of Blue Bayou, LA, tracks down Los Angeles homicide detective Regan Hart to deliver a journal and a tidy sum in stock certificates left to her by her birth mother, Nate is surprised by Regan’s reaction. She isn’t interested in her inheritance, but she’s stunned to learn that she’s adopted. To uncover the truth about her past, Regan returns to Blue Bayou, where she delves into the mystery behind her mother’s death and becomes intimately involved with Nate. Meanwhile, Nate receives temporary custody of an abused 12-year-old runaway. Ross focuses heavily on the topic of domestic violence, and her frequent moralizing may put off some readers. Others, however, will be sufficiently beguiled by the book’s Southern ambiance and pleasing, if predictable, romance. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mallory’s Oracle. Carol O’Connell. 1994. 286p. (A Mallory Novel). GP Putnam’s Sons. Jonathan Kellerman says Mallory’s Oracle is “a joy.” Nelson DeMille and other advance readers have called it “truly amazing,” “a classic” with “immense appeal.” It is all of that, and more: a stunning debut novel about a web of unsolved murders in New York’s Gramercy Park and the singular woman who makes them her obsession. At its center is Kathleen Mallory, an extraordinary wild child turned New York City policewoman. Adopted off the streets as a little girl by a police inspector and his wife, she is still not altogether civilized now that she is a sergeant in the Special Crimes section. With her ferocious intelligence and green gunslinger eyes, Mallory (never Kathleen, never Kathy) operates by her own inner compass of right and wrong, a sense of justice that drives her in unpredictable ways. She is a thing apart. And today, she is a thing possessed. Although more at home in the company of computers than in the company of men, Mallory is propelled onto the street when the body of her adoptive father, Louis Markowitz, is found stabbed in a tenement next to the body of a wealthy Gramercy Park woman. The murders are clearly linked to two other Gramercy Park homicides Markowitz had been investigating, and now his cases become Mallory’s, his death her cause. Prowling the streets, sifting through his clues, drawing on his circle of friends and colleagues, she plunges into a netherworld of light and shadow, where people are not what they seem and truth shifts without warning. And a murderer waits who is every bit as wild and unpredictable as she. Other Titles in the “Mallory” Series: The Man Who Cast Two Shadows (1995); Killing Critics (1996); Stone Angel (1997); Shell Game (1999); Crime School (2002); Dead Famous (2003); Winter House (2004); and Find Me (2006).

Man Who Cast Two Shadows, The. Carol O’Connell. 1995. 278p. (A Mallory Novel). GP Putnam’s Sons. O’Connell’s second novel (after Mallory’s Oracle) brings back NYPD Sergeant Kathy Mallory, plunging this tough-minded yet soulful heroine into another convoluted case. When a woman killed in Central Park is mistakenly identified as Mallory, the former street urchin and computer whiz sets herself up as bait by moving into the apartment building that houses her three main suspects. Using a computer and the building’s electronic bulletin board to psych out the killer, she stirs up more than she bargained for—including someone who wants her dead. Other elements in the intelligent plot include a crime of passion, a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game and a boy who may be telekinetic and whose stepmothers keep dying. The dialogue is crisp, the prose supple, but the overall tone is dour, sometimes, in fact, mournful. Not enough of the story is told from Mallory’s point of view, however, and O’Connell tends to evoke her mysterious behavior through description rather than through action. As a result, Mallory—who with her bitter youth, street smarts and rough edges carries echoes of Andrew Vachss’s Burke—remains an enigma, a major absence at the center of the plot. — Publisher’s Weekly. Other Titles in the “Mallory” Series: Mallory’s Oracle (1994); Killing Critics (1996); Stone Angel (1997); Shell Game (1999); Crime School (2002); Dead Famous (2003); Winter House (2005); and Find Me (2006).

Man With No Face, The. Margaret Armstrong. 1940. 279p. Random House. The unscrupulous adopted son of a rich Australian who has died and left his considerable fortune to far-flung American cousins is determined to destroy the beneficiaries before the terms of the will can be carried out.

Mark on the Mirror, The. Margaret Sutton. Illustrated by Pelafie Doane. 1942. 206p. (A Judy Bolton Mystery #15). Grosset & Dunlap. In a child custody battle, lawyer Peter Dobbs is uncertain which side to represent. Neither Mr. Ritter nor his ex-wife seem fit to raise their twelve-year-old adopted daughter, Ella. Judy steps in and reunite Ella with her birth father.

Mask, The. Dean Koontz. 1989. 341p. Headline (UK). Such a pretty face. So young, so sweet. She appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of traffic, on a busy day. A teenager with no past, no family—no memories. Such a lovely child. So blond and beautiful. Carol and Paul were drawn to her—she was the child they’d never had. A dream come true. And then Carol’s nightmares began—the ghastly sounds in the night, the bloody face in the mirror. the razor-sharp ax. Such relentless evil. So deceptively innocent. Most mothers would die for such a darling little angel. And that’s what frightened Carol most of all.

Melancholy Baby. Robert B Parker. 2004. 378p. GP Putnam’s Sons. My ex-husband was getting married to a woman I wanted to kill. I didn’t actually know her, and killing her would only make matters worse. But I got as much pleasure out of the idea as I could before I had to let go of it. And so begins Melancholy Baby, the fourth novel in the bestselling series featuring Sunny Randall who now faces the unthinkable: the marriage of her ex-husband, Richie, to someone else. Despite the formality of divorce, Sunny and Richie’s relationship had continued, in its own headstrong way, until Richie’s desire for marriage overtook Sunny’s need for freedom. So when college student Sarah Markham comes asking for help in finding her birth parents, Sunny realizes she must take the case, if only to distract her from her personal life. But life and work have a curious—and dangerous—way of intersecting. Before the investigation has a chance to take off, two key players are dead, and Sunny is back on a psychiatrist’s couch, probing her own past for clues. What she discovers has the potential to shatter Sarah Markham’s family and destroy her sense of self, while Sunny’s own beliefs are put to the ultimate test. Emotionally complex and rich with insight, this is the Grand Master at his storytelling best. About the Author: Robert B. Parker is the author of almost fifty books.

Mercy Trap. James E Martin. 1989. 255p. Putnam. Gil Disbro’s clients have an adopted daughter, now a young woman, who needs a kidney transplant. They want Gil to find the biological mother whose identity was closely guarded by the lawyer who arranged the adoption nearly 30 years before. Gil’s search disturbs a host of people, from an ex-con on the skids who winds up a corpse to an underworld figure who threatens Gil’s life.

Midnight Hour, The. Karen Robards. 1999. 359p. Delacorte. Judge Grace Hart seems to have it all: a successful career, a bright, beautiful teenage daughter, and a comfortable home in a quiet Ohio suburb. But beneath the placid veneer, darker truths lie waiting: Her daughter is testing the limits of Grace’s patience, exploring a world of liquor and drugs, and a stranger has begun lurking about, threatening their safety and peace of mind. Unnerved by the prospect of a stalker, Grace calls the police—and that’s where Detective Tony Marino comes in. But his presence creates as much confusion as it does security. While outwardly they seem to be opposites, the undercurrents of a romantic attraction between them are undeniable. When it becomes clear that the stalker has the power to destroy all that Grace holds dear, Grace and Tony join forces to stop him, soon learning that any hope for their future will require a reckoning with the past. Karen Robards pulls out all the stops to create her most nerve-shattering book to date, keeping readers breathless and guessing what will come next until the very last page.

Midnight Revelations. Karen M Bence. 2008. 216p. SterlingHouse Publisher. When Sara, her husband David and their young son Jack move into an old horse farm, they don’t know that the farm is haunted by tragedies that befell its previous owners. Soon chilling events begin take place. Sara discovers a locked diary, has strange dreams of people she doesn’t know, and sees the ethereal reflection of a tormented woman in an antique mirror. When Jack is rendered comatose in a bizarre accident, Sara, in desperation, goes to a nearby church and meets the senior priest, the mystery man from her dreams. Resolved to find out what lies behind the strange events at the farm, Sara stumbles across the key to the diary...as well as the key to her own past. Who really are her parents? What grave secret is the old estate hiding? And what will become of Jack? A chilling book that eplores the paranormal, Midnight Revelations is a powerful portrait of strong woman determined to uncover the truth about herself. About the Author: Karen M. Bence graduated with a bachelor of arts in Psychology from Dickinson College and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. A former social worker, psychotherapist and educator, Ms. Bence is an avid equestrian and dog breeder. Like the protagonist of Midnight Revelations, she also engaged in a determined search for her biological mother. Ms. Bence currently resides with her husband and son in a horse farm outside of Atlanta, GA.

Mirror Image. Clair M Poulson. 2005. 288p. Covenant Communications. In this exhilarating new thriller from the king of LDS suspense, twin boys are born into tragedy when their mother dies giving birth. Separated through adoption, the two boys grow up worlds apart. Greg Ralston, handsome, intelligent, and a talented athlete with a promising future, is the ideal all-American boy. Rafe Collings, on the other hand, is a down-to-earth cowboy who, at an early age, witnessed an unspeakable crime, and has the criminal’s face—and his horrible threat—burned deep into his memory. Then there is Lindsay Diamond, the one person who has figured out the connection between these two young men. While her knowledge has the potential to reunite the long-lost brothers, it also involves dangerous individuals who are desperate to keep hidden truths buried, no matter who gets in the way.

Missing Joseph. Elizabeth George. 1993. 512p. Bantam Books, Inc. Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead—a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village, relationships that bring men and women together with a passion, with grief, or with the intention to kill. Peeling away layer after layer of personal history to reveal the torment of a fugitive spirit, Missing Joseph is award-winning author Elizabeth George’s greatest achievement.

Moonbird Boy. Abigail Padgett. 1996. 259p. (Bo Bradley Mysteries). The Mysterious Press. While recovering from a bout of depression, Bo Bradley meets Mort Wagman and his son, Bird, at the Ghost Flower Lodge, a psychiatric rehabilitation facility run by the Neji Indians. When Mort is killed, Bo wants to find suitable foster care for the young boy, but his hyperactive disorder doesn’t make him a prime subject for adoption. In addition to this problem, it seems that somebody may be trying to kill Bird—perhaps the same somebody behind the disappearance of Old Ayma, another schizophrenic patient who vanished from Ghost Flower Lodge. Bo’s investigations lead her to a plot involving greedy aspirations of a medical management corporation that hopes to franchise the Lodge’s traditional Neji healing approach.

Mortal Groove, The: A Jane Lawless Mystery. Ellen Hart. 2007. St Martin’s Minotaur. Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth Jane Lawless is in the middle of ringing in the New Year the best way she knows how—with her family, friends, and some excellent champagne—when the biggest financial backers in Minnesota politics break up the party with a little backroom proposition for her father: How’d he like to be the state’s next governor? Flattered, Ray Lawless, a retired defense attorney, agrees to run, and the latecomer’s sprint to the state capital is going great until reporters and opponents start digging up the kind of dirt that is more valuable than gold out on the campaign trail. He and his family are fair game, but worse than that, so are the men running his campaign. Their secrets, involving the mysterious death of a young woman, have been buried since the summer they all came home from Vietnam. Unfortunately for Jane and her father, those secrets won’t stay that way for long. The Mortal Groove, the newest addition to Lambda and Minnesota Book Award-winning author Ellen Hart’s multilayered Jane Lawless series, is a haunting tale of dark secrets that is sure to satisfy.

Mother’s Day. Patricia MacDonald. 1994. 293p. Warner Books. The bestselling author of The Unforgiven and Stranger in the House pens a spine-tingling thriller. It all starts on Mother’s Day. Karen Newhall’s family is happy and secure—until her adopted daughter’s biological mother arrives out of the blue, and shortly thereafter is found dead—turning Karen’s idyllic life upside-down.

Motive on Record, The. Dell Shannon (Pseudonym of Elizabeth Linington). 1982. 227p. William Morrow & Co. Death is everywhere. A child in a playground. A playboy in a cheap hotel room. A John Doe in a freight yard. A nanny & her two charges in a church pew. After 26 yrs. in homicide, Lt. Luis Mendoza knew death was all in a day’s work. But in the heat of a Los Angeles summer, even the predictabl e becomes bizarre. And for a hard-boiled cop w/a decidedly soft center, nothing becomes more implausible than human nature, especially when it comes to murder.

Murder in Mayfair, A. Robert Barnard. 2000. 272p. Scribner. When Colin Pinnock becomes a junior minister under the new Prime Minister’s government, he’s understandably thrilled. Still a youngish man, with a shining reputation among his colleagues, he’s clearly being groomed for even higher office. Messages of congratulations flow in from near and far. Basking in the greetings and the praise, Colin picks one soiled postcard out of the stack of congratulatory missives. “Who Do You Think You Are?” it asks. Who wrote the card? How did the person know his home address? Does the writer think Colin is getting a big head, or do the words carry a more profound meaning? And, taking the question literally, who, indeed, is Colin? Who were his real parents? What were the circumstances of his birth? He had a happy childhood in the north of England, but he now recalls some clues that he might have been adopted. His mother is dead and his father is too senile to offer any help on family history. He’ll have to find his answers on his own. Even more puzzling, perhaps, than Colin’s origins, is a top civil servant’s shocked response when she first encounters him. Whose image does she see in Colin’s face, and what possible link does Colin have to an infamous crime of the past? Faced with additional threatening messages that seem to come from somebody who knows his every movement, Colin begins an urgent investigation into his past and a dangerous search for his tormentor.

Musclebound. Liza Cody. 1997. 279p. Mysterious Press (UK). Down but not out, that’s Eva Wylie, the erstwhile London Lassassin who’s been barred from wrestling because she had too much pride in her work to wear the ridiculous getup the omnipotent promoter Daddy (“Dirty”) Deeds wanted her to wear. Eva’s so close to the dole that she’s even had to take a job for The Enemy, Anna Lee of Lee-Schiller Security, guarding a lotful of the Ferraris she’d rather be hotwiring and driving off. On her way home from getting fired (naturally) by The Enemy, Eva runs into a spot of luck—an unlocked red Carlton containing a sportsbag stuffed with Bank of England notes. Even better, her beloved sister Simone, who’s had all too little to do with Eva from the time Simone was put up for adoption on through her mini-triumphs as a men’s magazine model, has picked now of all times to pop up in Eva’s life again. Eva waxes rhapsodic—“If I had Simone behind me, Simone to watch me, I could do it all—be the London Lassassin again”—until their viperish mother descends on the pair, the driver of the Carlton comes looking for the person who pinched his dosh, and an unexpectedly violent outburst and a series of nasty surprises make Eva sorry she didn’t stick to borrowing cars that weren’t equipped with a cash bonus. Like Eva’s earlier appearances (Monkey Wrench, 1995, etc.), this third one tends to run down instead of winding up—but when you’re dealing with as obtuse and sensitive a heroine as unforgettable Eva, whose main function is to register experiences rather than analyze them, that’s probably inevitable. — From Kirkus Reviews. Copyright © 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

My Best Friend. Laura Wilson. 2001. 256p. Orion (UK). A quiet Suffolk village, 1944. Fourteen-year-old Gerald Haxton is a lonely boy who regards his still-born twin brother Jack as his only real friend. His mother, a famous children’s writer, guards Jack’s memory jealously, claiming him as the model for the boy detective in her series of adventure stories, and Gerald, disturbed and unpopular, has no hope of ever measuring up to him. Playing in the woods near his home, Gerald discovers the body of his elder sister buried in a shallow grave. She has been beaten to death with a wooden stake and her boyfriend, a young GI, is hanged for the crime. London, 1995. As the country prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VE Day, Gerald, who remains a loner, is nearing retirement. Obsessed by routine, he still talks to his dead brother, Jack. Surrounded by nostalgic artefacts at the TV prop-hire company where he works, he is constantly reminded of the past, and with it, his sister Vera’s death. Hoping to escape his lonely existence, he takes to following Mel, the twelve-year-old daughter of a colleague. A few days later Mel, who bears a striking resemblance to Vera, disappears ... About the Author: Laura Wilson was brought up in London and has degrees in English Literature from Somerville College, Oxford and UCL, London. She has worked briefly and ingloriously as a teacher, and more successfully as an editor of non-fiction books. She has written history books for children and is interested in history, particularly of the recent past, painting and sculpture, uninhabited buildings, underground structures, cemeteries and time capsules. She lives with her partner and their basset hound in North Essex.

Nail Through the Heart, A: A Novel of Bangkok. Timothy Hallinan. 2007. 336p. William Morrow. Travel writer Poke Rafferty is good at looking for trouble—so good he makes his living writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored. His Looking for Trouble series is for travelers obsessed with the unusual: how to beat official foreign-exchange rates; how to spot fake amber or counterfeit money; how much to bribe a cop; how to identify a transvestite before it’s too late; and how to know, within an hour of arriving in a strange city, where to find the best bars, the best clubs, the best food, the best clothes, and the dodgiest entertainment at the best prices. Then Rafferty falls in love with Rose, an ex-Patpong Road bar girl, and he badly wants to be a part of her new life. Both Rose and Bangkok itself have stolen his heart. To complete his new family, Rafferty is in the process of adopting a wary eight-year-old street orphan when trouble comes looking for him. First he takes in another orphan, a troubled and terrifying street urchin nicknamed Superman. Then he agrees to find a distraught woman’s missing uncle, a task that seems simple enough given the uncle’s predilections for just the kind of shadowy places Rafferty knows well. Finally, in a moment of weakness, he accepts an old woman’s generous payment in exchange for locating a blackmailing thief. Soon, these three seemingly disparate events begin to overlap, pulling Rafferty deeper into dark, unfamiliar terrain, and he begins to realize that some people guard unspeakable secrets that don’t always show on their faces—and that all this time he’s been gliding across the surface of a culture he doesn’t understand. About the Author: Timothy Hallinan has written ten novels and a work of nonfiction. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand, where he has lived off and on since 1985. For more than twenty years, he ran one of America’s top television consulting firms, advising many Fortune 500 companies. He has also taught writing. Hallinan is married to Munyin Choy. By the Same Author (Bangkok Thriller Series): The Fourth Watcher (2008), Breathing Water (2009).

Nanny Murders, The. Merry Jones. 2005. 327p. St Martin’s Press. The Nanny Murders is a page-turner about missing nannies who have disappeared, one by one, from a close-knit Philadelphia neighborhood. Zoe Hayes, who works as an art therapist in an institute for seriously deranged patients, is the single mother of an adopted (and adorable) little girl named Molly. Zoe gets involved in the missing nannies case when Molly makes a grisly discovery while playying in the snow—she finds a piece of litter than turns out to be a human finger. One of Zoe’s neighbors (but which one?) seems to be a serial killer. Zoe and a mysteriously scarred detective named Nick Stiles team up to catch the killer when suddenly Zoe becomes the prey.

Night of Errors, A. Michael Innes (pseudonym of JIM Stewart). 1947. 211p. (An Inspector Appleby Mystery). Dodd, Meade & Co. Sherris Hall, a somewhat decayed stately home of England, is the fantastic setting for one of Sir John Appleby’s wildest cases, with a full cast of characters to match. There is vague, yet oddly expectant Lady Dromio; her unseen, but sinister son, Sir Oliver; cryptic Lucy, her adopted daughter’ Swindle, the somnolent butler; and the dead shades of Sir Oliver’s triplet brothers, Jacques and Orlando, the shock of whose birth forty years ago, had totally unhinged their father’s tottering mind. Fire, murder, and mad chases succeed one another through an unforgettable night, as Appleby struggles to sort out an ever-more-complicated—and ominous—situation. By the Same Author: Andrew and Tobias.

Nighttime is My Time. Mary Higgins Clark. 2004. 370p. Simon & Schuster. Jean Sheridan, a college dean and prominent historian, sets out to her hometown to attend the twenty-year reunion of Stonecroft Academy alumni, where she is to be honored along with six other members of her class. There is something uneasy in the air: one woman in the group about to be feted, Alison Kendall, a beautiful, high-powered Hollywood agent, drowned in her pool during an early-morning swim. Alison is the fifth woman in the class whose life has come to a sudden, mysterious end. Adding to Jean’s sense of unease is a taunting, anonymous fax she received, referring to her daughter — a child she had given up for adoption twenty years ago. At the award dinner, Jean is introduced to Sam Deegan, a detective obsessed by the unsolved murder of a young woman who may hold the key to the identity of the Stonecroft killer. Jean does not suspect that among the distinguished people she is greeting is The Owl, a murderer nearing the countdown on his mission of vengeance against the Stonecroft women who had mocked and humiliated him, with Jean as his final victim.

96 Tears. Doug J Swanson. 1999. 208p. HarperCollins. Jack is hired by the doyenne of Big D’s nouveau riche, Sherri Plunkett, to stalk whoever is stalking her daughter, Sandra. As always for Jack, what first seems straightforward turns out to be dizzyingly complex. Sherri has a shady background she’d rather not dwell on and an even shadier new husband, who was her pool boy before the wedding. Sandra, the stalkee, doesn’t seem to mind the attention, and Jack (who should know better) doesn’t mind Sandra’s attentions—or her appetite for high-speed exhibitionism. While Jack’s stalking the stalker, he’s being stalked himself by splendidly stupid thug Teddy Tunstra II, whom Jack put in prison for what may prove to be a dangerously short sentence. Jack thinks he’s ahead of the game when he gets wind of a plot to stage Sandra’s kidnapping, but it turns out he’s one step behind Teddy and his hulking jailhouse crony, Frederick Mertts. Everyone’s intent on feeding Jack a steady diet of misinformation, disinformation, and flat-out lies, and he’ll choke to death unless he can dig up some harsh truths about Sherri’s past, Sandra’s, and his own. Helping him dig is a welter of outlandish and utterly convincing characters, from a few well-placed eels to a lovable old arsonist. — From the Publisher

No Second Chance. Harlan Coben. 2003. 352p. Dutton. From Kirkus Reviews: Once again, Coben (Gone for Good, 2002, etc. ) expertly tugs at a suburban citizens most ordinary fears until he finds a mind-boggling criminal conspiracy at the other end of the line. Pediatric reconstructive surgeon Marc Seidman’s family life ends with two shots into his body and another into his wife Monica’s, leaving her as dead as Marc was supposed to be. When he awakens 12 days later, he learns that his baby girl Tara has disappeared from his home as well. There’s a ransom demand, and Monica’s wealthy, remote father is happy to pay the freight, but Marc ignores Edgar Portman’s wishes, tips off the police and the FBI, and loses the money, any hope of recovering Tara, and his crackhead sister Stacy, who dies of an overdose soon after the cops tie her to the abduction. Eighteen months later, though, the kidnappers give Marc the second chance they swore they wouldn’t: For another $2 million, they’ll return Tara, whose hair samples they’ve already sent to her grandfather. And now Marc has a new ally, his college girlfriend Rachel Mills, a former FBI agent who just happens to have turned up again. If you think Marc and Rachel will outfox the kidnappers this time around, you don’t know Coben, who’s looking way past the second abortive ransom drop to a racket that entangles a washed-up child TV star, the protector she met in the loony bin, an improbably successful adoption lawyer, and assorted Serbian extras. And just in case these malefactors aren’t enough, he casts suspicion on Dina Levinsky, the abused girl who used to live in Marc’s house; on Rachel (how did her husband get shot to death? ); and even on Marc himself (why were he and Monica shot with two different weapons?).

North of the Border. Judith Van Gieson. 1988. 171p. Walker & Co. “Don’t worry, Chiquita” was the Kid’s answer to almost everything, and right now Neil Hamel misses the Kid—her part-time lover and car mechanic. Neil had gone to Mexico as a favor to a man she shouldn’t be doing favors for, and what it got her was a face-to-face meeting with a corpse, a Mexican lawyer with a diamond pinky ring and a throat slit from ear to ear. Returning home to Albuquerque, Neil can’t let go of the tangled scheme she has uncovered. Looking for the truth, she finds human predators.