Before He Finds Her

Meg Miller, the teenage heroine of Kardos’s thriller, has been hiding under the name Melanie Denison for the decade and a half since her father, Ramsey Miller, murdered her mother, tried to kill her, and disappeared. Weary of living in terror, she runs away from her overprotective guardians in the hope of finding and confronting her father and her fear. The story alternates between Meg’s present-day search for information in Silver Bay, N.J., where the crime was committed, and the events in Ramsey Miller’s life leading up to the night of the murder. This leaves reader Whelan the task of constantly shifting from the voice and sensibility of a bright young woman on a dangerous quest, to a gruff young man with a Jersey accent who is putting himself through lifestyle changes. Both characters are brought strikingly to life, and as Kardos’s engrossing novel introduces a series of intriguing characters—including Meg’s aging hippie stepparents, a smarmy TV network weatherman, and a shrewd, unemotional police detective—Whelan takes each in stride. [em]A Mysterious hardcover. (Feb.) [/em]