THE MATCHMAKER

An exclusive dating agency is pairing clients with more than relationships in this international thriller.

FBI agent Rebecca Ryan’s too-busy-to-date-to-find-a-mate sister Katharine brings home a dark stranger, David DeSilva, to meet her family of cops. The couple was quickly matched through the elite Matchme dating agency, which charges a $5,000 fee along with a required blood test—an exorbitant screening process that costs prospective clients much more than an arm and a leg. After a friendly interrogation, their Irish mother’s intuition radar is on high alert. Something is amiss. Meanwhile Boston cop James Conti, Rebecca’s ex, tracks the disappearances of young Americans abroad who all have one thing in common: the Matchme agency. Rebecca and James team up when a link is discovered between DeSilva’s offshore account in the Cayman Islands and dealings in Egypt. Could there be a connection to al-Qaida? Meanwhile, several children also go missing without a trace. They have one thing in common, the Future Dreams fertility clinic where mothers are subjected to intensive genetic screenings. A coincidence? Something evil is afoot, but for this crack team of one of Boston’s finest detectives and a Quantico-trained FBI agent it is a puzzle. Homeland Security is alerted; intra-agency inner workings are revealed; a lucrative, sinister business of selling harvested organs on the black market is discovered—all combine for an intense thrill ride. The compelling premise and nonstop pacing outweigh the predictability of the love story, the incessant restating of matriarch Ryan’s inbuilt Irish “radar that even rocket scientists could not improve on,” and the overly dramatic foreboding of impending danger at the end of nearly every chapter.

An intriguing thrill ride through the nefarious underworld of black-market body parts will have readers on high alert.