Little Lamb Lost

Fenton puts her experiences as a social worker to good use in her promising debut. After toddler Michael Hennessy dies of a drug overdose, Claire Conover, of the Birmingham, Ala., Department of Human Services, doesn’t believe the boy’s mother, Ashley, spiked his sippy cup. Ashley, who has a history of hardcore drugs and booze, had been working too hard to get clean in order to regain custody of Michael. Determined to find the real killer, Claire sets out on a course that could cost her career or even her life. Fenton paces her straightforward plot well, but her real strength is in the way she develops her characters’ relationships. A number of secondary players—an investigative reporter and a guy who knows his way around a computer—pave the way for a sequel. With her fine ear for regional speech, Fenton may do for Birmingham what Margaret Maron has done for rural North Carolina. (June)