Summer

15 February 2009

THE GINGERBREAD MAN - Maggie Shayne

I always enjoy reading a good thriller, so I was glad to find this one up for trade a year or so ago from a friend. Then it arrived and sat on the shelves, moving further and further to the back until I saw that I owed it to someone on the same message board I'd found THE GINGERBREAD MAN. sigh....so I rooted around the closet sector of Mt Git'r'Read and found it. It became my purse book and languished in the Mom Bag due to lack of 'me time' these days. Okay...whinging time is over...
I am glad this is a well written book so that each time I had the chance to pick it up, I could easily pick up where I left off.

Detective Vince O'Malley is in the middle of an abduction case of two missing children when the FBI takes over the case when the children are found dead. O'Malley is told to take some time off after becoming overwhelmed with the aftermath. He takes a piece of evidence he found at the scene and travels to upstate New York to solve the case on his own.
He meets Holly Newman, fragile and surviving after her 5 year old sister was abducted years ago while the two were walking home from school. She blames herself and has been berating herself since.
Vince feels that the abduction of Holly's sister is connected somehow to the current case and the feeling grows to certainty as their lives are threatened.
Is it the aging film star, Reginald D'Voe, who has come back to town with his niece and having the Halloween party that he used to throw many years ago...for children only? Or is it Dr Ernie Greycloud, the town doctor and closemouthed on all things Holly related.
Several suspects are introduced and I sort of had a good idea who it was about the middle of the book, but I wasn't absolutely sure and I was really diggin' on the storyline, so kept reading. The ending is very well done and I will gladly look for more of Maggie Shayne's books, even her paranormal romances which aren't my usual read.

Four upstate New York thriller beans.....



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