Pretty Babies

Grice's ( Suspicion ) fifth novel is both topical and timely: about a child molester and a teenage girl who kidnaps his baby to keep the infant from harm, it's the stuff of today's newspaper and TV features. Unfortunately, the stock characters, clumsy prose and transparent resolution negate the momentum generated by the story line. Thirteen-year-old Dani McVie escapes her vicious prostitute mother and a squalid life on Detroit's streets, finally landing as a foster child in the home of wealthy Maureen Lockwood and her husband Bonner, an unctuous college professor--and closet pedophile. Because of Dani's street background and history of lying, no one will believe her when she tries to expose Bonner, so she takes the baby and flees to Tennessee, where her rebel friend Ryan Sokol has just been exiled to a military school. Both Bonner and Vivian Clavell, the social worker who placed Dani with the Lockwoods, follow the girl to the school, site of the novel's predictable climax. A modicum of suspense provides only scant interest in this formulaic offering. (Aug.)