Where Are the Children Now?

November 1, 2022

Blockbuster Baldacci takes a break with Simply Lies, forsaking his various series for the moment to write a stand-alone (a million-copy first printing). In Where Are the Children Now? Burke springboards from the Higgins Clark classic Where Are the Children? as a grown-up Missy and Mike rely on what they learned during their own childhood abduction to rescue Missy's snatched stepdaughter. In Graham's Shadow of Death, Amy Larson of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and FBI special agent Hunter Forrest head to Denver to find the lethal doomsday cult they tracked through Danger in Numbers and Crimson Summer. In Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Rendition, Hood brings back Adam Hayes, who rushes in to help former partner Abdul Nassir and his family, who are terrified of both the Taliban and the rogue CIA contractors gone violent as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan. Mary Pat Fennessey's teenage daughter goes missing and a young Black man is struck and killed by a subway train on the same steamy night in 1974 Boston, and there are no Small Mercies as Mary Pat's hunt for Jules riles the Irish mob; following Lehane's multi-best-booked Since We Fell (150,000-copy first printing). Two cold cases are Standing in the Shadows in this latest from Edgar and CWA Dagger in the Library honoree Robinson; in 1980, Nick Hartley is suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend and spends a lifetime seeking the killer, while in 2019 a modern-day skeleton found at an archaeological dig keeps Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team busy. In Sandford's Dark Angel, Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter Letty poses as a rogue programmer for hire to help the Department of Homeland Security forestall the takeover of Minneapolis's power grid by some ominous hackers. While facing down angry competitors when he moves to the West Coast and its City of Dreams, young, widowed mob underboss Danny Ryan visits the set of a movie depicting his crew's involvement in the New England crime war and encounters the actress playing his late wife; following Winslow's New York Times best-selling series launcher, City on Fire (250,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 13, 2023
MWA Grand Master Clark (1927–2020) and Edgar finalist Burke’s suspenseful sequel to 1975’s Where Are the Children?, Clark’s first psychological thriller, features Melissa, the daughter of the original book’s protagonist, Nancy Eldredge. Now a 43-year-old lawyer and the host of a successful true crime podcast, Melissa is at her mother’s home in Cape Cod preparing for her wedding to widower Charlie Miller, whom she met at group therapy, and is looking forward to becoming the stepmother of his not-quite-three-year-old daughter, Riley. The therapy, as well as being back at her mother’s, stirs up repressed memories of Melissa’s abduction and the abuse she suffered at age three, causing horrific nightmares. After the wedding, Riley disappears while in Melissa’s care. As circumstantial evidence against her starts stacking up, she becomes a suspect for the police. Newcomers may have to take notes to keep track of the large cast, including each of their complicated backstories. Though this can be read as a standalone, it will be more satisfying, and perhaps less confusing, for those who have read the original. Agents: Philip and Anne-Lise Spitzer, Spitzer Agency.

Starred review from February 15, 2023
How do you extend the oeuvre of a deceased author who mostly avoided continuing characters? Burke, who collaborated with Clark on several novels before her passing, comes up with a most ingenious way. In Where Are the Children? (1975), Clark's very first novel, Melissa and Mike Eldredge were kidnapped by their mother's ex-husband. A generation later, Melissa is a seasoned prosecutor whose high-profile success in getting the murder conviction of an abused woman vacated launched her on a second career as a true-crime podcaster. She's just married geologist Charlie Miller, who's been raising his 3-year-old daughter, Riley, by himself since the accidental death of his first wife, Linda, soon after the girl's birth. History repeats itself in the most traumatic way imaginable three months later when Riley vanishes shortly after Melissa is confronted by an unfamiliar woman at the playground: "I know all about you," the stranger had said. "You're a fraud. And a hypocrite." Since Charlie, who's off on a job in the Caribbean, has a solid alibi, Suffolk County Detectives Heather Hall and Guy Marino perversely fasten on Melissa as their most likely suspect. Worse yet, Grant Macintosh, the friend and former colleague Melissa asks to step in as Charlie's lawyer on his return to Long Island, informs her that his responsibility to Charlie limits the help he can provide her and even the contact he can allow between the spouses. And Charlie himself seems ever more distant from Melissa, who feels painfully ripped away not only from her stepdaughter, but from her family, her friends, and her bridegroom. Whom can she possibly trust at this moment of supreme stress--and will her trust be repaid or betrayed? An expertly twisted sequel fully worthy of its celebrated original.

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