Kidnap [Mass Market Paperback]

Kidnap introduces Edwina Henderson as the professional and literary successor to retired fictional RCMP officer Karl Alberg in L.R. Wright's multi-award-winning mystery series set on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. As its title suggests, Kidnap centres on abduction. Who did it is never in question--five-year-old Samantha was snatched by the lonely 60-year-old neighbour of a resentful cousin. Instead, the story probes just why Susie Wilson stole the child.

Having racked up numerous prizes, including the first Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America to a Canadian novel (for her debut, The Suspect) and two Arthur Ellis Awards (for A Chill Rain in January and Mother Love), Wright ranks with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell as a master of the psychological thriller. In Kidnap, tensions mount as Eddie Henderson grapples with the demands of adjusting to a new job in an unfamiliar community while trying desperately to escape some ghosts in her past. Wright brings her trademark tricks to the new series, keeping readers enthralled by the possibility that violence may suddenly erupt, perhaps even in connection to the puzzling kidnapping. --Deirdre Hanna

"Wright's talent is to portray crimes from many points of view rather than set up the stock good guy/bad guy scenario. In Kidnap, she depicts the emotional states of Samantha, Eddie, and even those responsible for the abduction with such even-handed sympathy that by the end it is hard to know who to cheer for." - Vancouver magazine

In the tradition of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, to whom L.R. Wright is often compared, the suspense in Kidnap stems not from whodunnit but why. A young girl is taken from her aunt's care while her father is in Hawaii trying to recover from his wife's sudden death. A middle-aged woman, spurred on by an unscrupulous accomplice, tries to assuage her feelings of loneliness and despair with a dramatic act of revenge. Edwina "Eddie" Henderson, battling to assert her authority over the Sechelt's RCMP detachment following the retirement of beloved Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, urgently tries to put together the pieces of a mysterious psychological puzzle in time to find the missing girl.

"Wright's talent is to portray crimes from many points of view rather than set up the stock good guy/bad guy scenario. In Kidnap, she depicts the emotional states of Samantha, Eddie, and even those responsible for the abduction with such even-handed sympathy that by the end it is hard to know who to cheer for." - Vancouver magazine

L.R. Wright died in February 2001. She is the author of fourteen previous novels. She twice won the Arthur Ellis Award for A Chill Rain in January and for Mother Love, which also won the Canadian Authors Association Award for literary fiction. She received the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Best Novel Award, for The Suspect.