Here and Gone

Audra Kinney, the heroine of this suspenseful but deeply disturbing thriller from Beck (the pseudonym of Irish author Stuart Neville), is fleeing from New York to California with her two kids to prevent her abusive ex from getting custody. One minute Audra is submitting to what seems a routine traffic stop in an Arizona backwater, the next she’s in a cell facing charges of marijuana possession with intent to distribute, 10-year-old Sean and six-year-old Louise have disappeared, and Sheriff Ronald Whiteside insists that no children were in the car when he pulled her over. When the story hits the media, the only person who credits Audra’s frantic claims that the last she saw of her kids was Whiteside’s ordering a deputy to drive them away to “somewhere safe” is a stranger, San Francisco gang member Danny “Knife Boy” Lee—because he’s convinced something similar happened to his wife and daughter five years earlier. The narrative drive more than compensates for sometimes inconsistent and less-than-convincing characters, though Audra and her children’s plight may upset some readers. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (June)