THERE WAS A LITTLE BOY

The kidnapping of a baby from a New York high-rise sets the stage for murder, paranoia, and nonstop handwringing 14 years later. Julie Greenwood thinks she's rebuilt her life since the kidnapping. She lost her husband, jazz great Les Layton, to drugs and guilt, but she's married again--to wealthy, caring cipher Greg Greenwood--and pregnant once more. But when Les turns up again in New York looking for her, and her friend Bobble, another teacher at Catherine Dunbar Junior High, is killed in the building, Julie--who's never told Greg about her earlier marriage or the kidnapping--feels her new life caving in. She'd be even more frantic if she knew her most recalcitrant student, Jesus Lebron, was actually her kidnapped son--stolen by an old woman at the bidding of the Messenger of God--and that Bobbie's murder is the work of a demented former student determined to work his way down a list of victims ending with Julie. The kidnapping and the murders are connected by a startlingly dumb twist, but readers reeling from the urban angst that first. novelist Jacobs pours on won't care: they'll be caught in the rising tide of hysteria that levels all the scenes, whether Julie is discovering Bobbie's body, getting locked in a vault at school, or having her hair dyed (chestnut, with a touch of auburn). The sensibility--Pollyanna gothic--is aimed at fans of Mary Higgins Clark, who'll put up with the careless plotting for the sake of the plushly upholstered menace.