Don’t Lose Her: A Max Freeman Mystery

Unmemorable characters don’t help Edgar-winner King’s tepid seventh Max Freeman mystery (after 2012’s Midnight Guardians). Soon after Juan Manuel Escalante, a Colombian drug cartel kingpin, threatens a pregnant Florida federal judge, Diane Manchester, in open court at his trial, she’s snatched from the street during her lunch break. Diane’s attorney husband immediately reaches out to Freeman, who rapidly insinuates himself into the official investigation. Since the book shifts among the perspectives of Freeman, Diane, and one of her abductors, the reader knows exactly what’s going on with Diane, as well as the thoughts of a reluctant criminal watching over her, which lessens rather than heightens the suspense as the story plays out in a fairly predictable way. The motive for the kidnapping seems like an afterthought, and more than a few developments come across as contrived. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency. (June)