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Former Maine assistant attorney general Katharine Clark writes a lively series about a tough private detective called Thea Kozak (Death at the Wheel, Death in a Funhouse Mirror) under her Kate Flora pseudonym. Now comes this timely and very suspenseful thriller about such hot-button issues as surrogate fatherhood, AIDS phobia, and people who manipulate the missing children epidemic. When 9-year-old David Stark disappears from his Massachusetts home, leaving behind on the roadside his new red bicycle, it touches raw nerves in several characters: David's over-protective mother, Rachel (who feels a strong psychic bond with her only child); his cold and supercilious father, Stephen (who isn't the boy's natural father--a sperm donor was involved); his jealous and mean-spirited aunt, Miranda (who gave away the family secret code, thus helping the kidnapper); an apparently unfeeling local detective; and the too-smooth head of a national missing children's foundation. Clark manages to keep us interested in even her unsympathetic characters as the plot unfolds. We see David being kept alive but in dire danger and learn why he was chosen to be the victim of this particular crime. If at times the author seems to rely too much on every parent's darkest fear for her emotional energy, she also is sharp enough to involve even the childless or the misanthropic in the twists of her story. --Dick Adler
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