Kidnapped

August 21, 2006
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.

Starred review from October 1, 2006
Reporter Irene Kelly's "Las Piernas Express" article on missing children sets off a sequence of deadly events when body parts are discovered in a remote area and the newspaper sends Irene to get preliminary information. Are the bones those of missing three-year-old Jenny Fletcher, whose graphic artist father was found bludgeoned to death at the time of her disappearance and whose stepbrother was convicted of the crime? Although Irene no longer works on homicide stories because of her marriage to homicide detective Frank Harriman, the couple are part of a group of friends that includes other reporters and police, forensic scientists, and members of a search-and-rescue K9 squad. Everyone gets involved in the investigation, which culminates in an unexpected way. Burke's 12th book proves that an author can write a refreshingly original mystery devoid of the genre's usual trappings. Not to be missed. Burke, the founder of the Crime Lab Project and a member of the board of the California Forensic Science Institute, lives in Southern California. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 6/1/06.]

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2006
Family dysfunction takes on new meaning in Edgar winner Burke's latest mystery featuring newspaper reporter Irene Kelly (after " Bloodlines," 2004). Like the earlier installments, this one is set in the fictional Southern California town of Las Piernas. Multimillionaire Graydon Fletcher and his wife have devoted their lives to providing for the less fortunate. Unable to have children themselves, the couple opts to adopt--21 boys and girls in all. Though they are not bound by blood, there's something incestuous about the Fletcher clan; nearly all of the offspring attend the elite Fletcher Academy (founded and funded by Graydon), and even as they grow older, the siblings spend nearly every waking hour in one another's company. After one Fletcher son is murdered and another is imprisoned for the crime, Kelly and her homicide-detective husband, Frank Harriman, unearth sinister truths about stolen identities and stolen lives. Burke's writing is crisp, but her characters are predictable, and her plot convoluted at best. Readers fascinated by forensic science should be content to focus on the pivotal clues gathered through the wonders of DNA.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)