Abducted

by Brian Pinkerton
Leisure Books
$6.99

Anyone who has ever feared bringing a stranger into the house, anyone who has ever felt a parent's greatest fear, anyone who has felt guilt at juggling career and family . . . will get a jolt by this tidy little thriller from first novelist Brian Pinkerton. It's a lean and mean Greyhound of a thriller—not a wasted word or scene, and it gallops with the requisite speed.

Ironically, Anita Sherwood is about to quit her high-stress, high paying, West coast software job to devote herself to her two-year old, Tim, when Fate intrudes and his devoted nanny kidnaps him from the Sherwood house on her last night. Given up for dead, Tim's loss leads Dennis and Anita Sherwood to the brink of emotional disaster and over, leaving Anita neurotic and dumping Dennis back into the bottle he had once conquered. But there's more, of course, and Pinkerton lays it out without frills but oh, so logically, at least in the first two thirds of the novel.

You see, it's not long before Anita starts to find Tim almost everywhere she looks. Since his body is never recovered, her hope becomes a lifeline. Even though the rest of her life and marriage more or less hit the skids, she can hope Tim is alive though everyone tells her he's dead. But then, two years later, in Chicago, Anita is certain she has glimpsed a four-year-old Tim with another woman. This time, she's certain. And she's not about to give up until she finds him again.

And the plot is off and running again for the second half. What could have been another insipid "what have you done with my baby!" story line instead achieves a neatly developed suspense. Should we, like the police, humor Anita? Is she right? Has she brought aboard the best possible allies in her quest? Exactly what did happen to Tim? Just how stable is Anita? And how far will she go to prove she's right?

Extremely convincing psychology makes the first half of Abducted absorbing and realistic. A character fades out who should have figured slightly more, and Pinkerton must resolve a tricky problem with a point of view shift that's jarring, but there aren't many alternate ways to handle it—minor flaws, at worst. Simple words and simple syntax give the impression of simplicity, but in reality there's a Hitchcockian principle employed here, and it works just fine.

Brian Pinkerton's first thriller takes familiar themes, but repackages them with skill and some daring, resulting in a page-turning read that's just cinematic enough to grab you and force you to read well past your bedtime.