Destiny's Pawn

April 25, 2016
Keeley’s solid third Peyton Cote novel (after 2015’s Fallen Sparrow) finds the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stationed in Maine near the Canadian border. To Peyton’s surprise, Aleksei Vann, a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, surrenders to her after crossing into the U.S. Aleksei says that after pro-Russian separatists bombed his family’s house in Donetsk and badly wounded his mother, his father sent him on a boat to Nova Scotia, hoping to get him to his aunt, who lives in Maine. The case attracts the attention of State Department officials, who fear that Aleksei could be but the first of a wave of Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum from Canada. Peyton is determined to get the truth about the details of Aleksei’s journey by identifying who got him to the border and to ascertain whether a human-trafficking ring was involved. Keeley does a good job of centering the action on a nonviolent crime, but a twist involving a real-life art theft may strike some readers as a stretch.