(Publisher’s Weekly, Nov. 17)

C.J. Box

Bestseller C.J. Box (Blue Heaven) explores an adoptive parent’s worst nightmare in this compelling and stand-alone thriller.  Jack McGuane, an employee of Denver’s convention and visitors bureau, and his wife suddenly discover that demonic Garrett Morland, the birth father of their dearly loved nine-month-old daughter, Angelina, didn’t sign away his parental rights.  Garrett and his powerful father, a sitting federal judge, give the McGuanes three weeks to return Angelina.  In this bleak scenario, Box eschews facile sentimentality and meticulously builds pitch-perfect characterizations, notably that of McGuane, who grew up with uneducated but hard-working parents on a series of Montana ranches.  Box’s equallyconvincing villains- gangsters, murderers, child pornographers-each providea different face of evil, and each individuals has to decide how best to get at the truth.  As usual, Box blessedly reasserts that whatever the cost, such truth exists, and ordinary folk have the strength to find it.  (January 2009)

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