HIDE IN PLACE

A former undercover cop who’s already lost her artist husband to divorce and her job to exhaustion searches frantically for her missing son.

Naymark, an artist married to an undercover detective, wastes no time launching her first novel with its very first sentence: “Laney Bird’s son vanished the night she drove a busload of high school seniors to see Wicked on Broadway.” At first Detective Ed Boswell, of the Sylvan Police Department, soft-pedals her concern because 13-year-old Alfie has already run away once before. Gerry Gavin, the principal at Alfie’s school, is equally unruffled: After all, it’s Laney’s 54th visit to his office. But Laney, who traded police work for bus driving when the strain of her job frayed her relationship with the misfit Alfie beyond endurance, has a bad feeling about this time, and of course she’s right. Alfie’s been kidnapped by Mr. Blue, who’s wormed his way into the boy's confidence by supplying him and his friend Jordan Rogers with beer, drugs, and porn and who, as pharmacist Owen Hopper, has a serious grudge against Alfie’s mother. Ignoring Boswell’s admonition to leave the case to the police, Laney tracks down Alfie’s friends, muscles into their homes, demands answers to her pointed questions, and for her trouble, attracts complaints about her behavior. Alfie, convinced that he’s utterly on his own, schemes to free himself. Instead of building the kind of tension that opening sentence promised, Naymark keeps looping back to extended flashbacks showing exactly why Owen Hopper emerged from prison determined to inflict a world of hurt on the woman he considers his nemesis.

Heartfelt but unsurprising except for a single twist that will shock no one but the hard-used heroine.