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There is a kind of thriller that makes a bargain with the reader: If you are willing to shelve your insistence on strict plausibility, I will take you on an adventure that takes your breath away. Fans of Adrian McKinty's award-winning Sean Duffy series set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles may be surprised to be asked to make such a bargain. They're used to a gritty historical realism, not a tightly-wound ticking clock wrapped around a few sticks of emotional dynamite, concealed in a placid suburban American setting. They might read the description and wonder if there's another writer out there with the same name. They might even wrinkle their nose and put it back. That would be a shame. Though it's not Sean Duffy, it might just be the breakout book the author deserves.
The story begins with a bang. A thirteen-year-old girl waiting for her school bus is confronted by a man with a gun who orders her into a car. She knows it's bad to get into a car, that's how girls vanish, but the gun is pointed at her heart and it's all happening so fast. As she's driven away, blindfolded and frightened, she thinks about the girls who survived, about how important it is to keep her wits about her.
Things aren't going well for her mother, Rachel, either. She's on her way to see her oncologist. Though she's been feeling good after the last round of chemo, something ominous has turned up in her latest blood work. But the oncologist will have to wait, because a call comes in. A mechanically-altered voice tells her she's not the first and won't be the last. It's not about money, it's about The Chain. You mustn't break the chain.
Her daughter Kylie, it soon becomes clear, has been kidnapped by desperate parents whose own child was kidnapped. That's how it works. The only way Rachel will be able to see Kylie again is if she if she successfully kidnaps a third child and sends what seems like an impossible amount of money to an anonymous source using bitcoin. If she breaks the chain, if she calls the police or can't raise the cash or fails to successfully find a victim to kidnap, Kylie will die. If she does everything as instructed, she'll get Kylie home and all will be well - but only so long as The Chain is never broken.
It's a measure of McKinty's skill that he pulls this rather improbable story off, mainly by creating richly detailed characters, including the resourceful Kylie, Rachel's irritating yet somehow sympathetic ex, and the ex-military brother-in-law who she turns to for help, though he has serious issues of his own. The tension is taut and the plotting is clever. As thrillers go, it ticks the boxes with panache.
Be sure to read the Afterword. The plot, it turns out, was inspired by Mexican kidnappings, and if you mourn the shift from Northern Ireland to the more familiar American setting, and from a connoisseur's treat to more standard thriller, the Afterword explains that, too.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, June 2019
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