MOTHER'S DAY

Five infants have disappeared from their seemingly well-run day nursery on Long Island. Owners Carlotta Sutten and Molly Crater have vanished too. The public outcry quickly brings three of the babies back home—returned by desperate would-be parents who'd paid the missing women huge sums and asked no questions. One child is found dead. Only Nicholas, son of newspaper reporters Em and Lucy Grazer, is left. While the Grazers write heartbreaking columns pleading for their baby's return, and FBI agent Don Tafoya and a horde of police track the fleeing women to Mexico and back—ever losing their prey—another figure enters the picture: Phrank, a juvenile computer hacker whose brilliance and gall know no bounds. Always a step ahead of the legit information seekers, it's Phrank who guides the Grazers and Tafoya to the isolated outskirts of Albuquerque, where the baby's fate rests on the hairspring psyche of a madman. Amply fulfilling the promise of the authors' debut novel (last year's Shoofly Pie to Die): a story in which every character commands attention—and every revelation and twist of plot increases the sense of menace. A dynamic, can't-put-it-down humdinger.