Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1213717 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This versatile author has always had the ability to raise goose bumps (Authorized Personnel Only; Good Cop, Bad Cop; etc.), but in this stand-alone thriller she makes our spines absolutely tingle. What began as an uncomplicated adoption of a Russian infant by wealthy American parents, New York surgeon Dooley McSweeney and his lawyer wife, Claudia, turns out to be anything but simple. After a bone marrow biopsy on four-year-old Teddy and some additional medical tests, Dooley realizes that his beautiful red-haired, green-eyed son is not the Russian baby they thought they'd legally adopted three years earlier, but an unknown child, kidnapped from God-knows-where. A man of great integrity, Dooley decides the real parents must be found. He refrains from telling Claudia of his fears, as he's sure she would run away with Teddy, leaving him sans child and wife. Meanwhile, an American journalist, Gabrielle Coulter, and her videographer, Justin Craig, are in Moscow working on a documentary on orphans around the world. The two plots coalesce when Justin is brutally murdered at the Hotel Metropol and "Go Home!" is spray-painted on a nearby wall. Hooligans wreck all their video equipment, except three tapes that Gabrielle has secreted in her handbag. Keep Kleenex ready as you near novel's end, for Dooley and Gabrielle's search for Teddy's true identity inevitably leads to heartbreak.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
D'Amato, winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Authorized Personnel Only (2000) and the Carl Sandburg Award for Good Cop, Bad Cop (1998), knows how to wring suspense out of her subjects. Here, the subject, a baby-selling cartel, is fraught with tension to begin with. D'Amato makes matters intriguingly worse by mixing together a couple who are fighting against their suspicions that their greatly loved adopted son is not who they thought he was; a CNN reporter and her cameraman who see, firsthand, the deplorable conditions in European and Russian orphanages; and an FBI investigation into a highly profitable and corrupt international adoption agency. The separate strands of this complex but riveting story start coming together when the couple find evidence suggesting their son was not orphaned but kidnapped at the same time the CNN reporter discovers her cameraman brutally slain in their Russian hotel. Another D'Amato stunner. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Splendid . . . a muckraking thriller that from beginning to end will keep readers gasping with wonder and outrage."-Chicago Sun-Times

"With brutal clarity, the story rushes toward an inevitable conclusion, the strength not in its surprise but in D'Amato's power to play the strong emotional material and create an all too believable tale of intrigue and greed."-The Houston Chronicle

"Another D'Amato stunner. . . . D'Amato knows how to wring suspense out of her subjects. . . . Fraught with tension . . . complex but riveting."-Booklist
-- Review

Customer Reviews

Not good
Like so many other reviewers, I thought the characters were cardboard and boring. It was a very slow read. I read to about page 120, sickened by much of the description. Yes, I know it goes on. NO I do not want to read about it. I could NOT believe how hard Dooley tried to get rid of his beloved adopted child!

***PLOT SPOILER ***




I peeked to the end of the book and when I found out he HAD give his child away, I tossed the book, with great force, against the wall. It was the right thing to do???? Was it the right thing to do for a four year old boy who'd only known one home and one set of parents??? Horrid. I'll never read another book by this author.

Mystery
The blurb was more interesting than the book itself was. An American couple adopt a Russian child, only he may not be Russian-born after all. So boring that I can't remember the end (though I skim-read about the last 150 pages). Couldn't grab my attention. (C)

Great Premise, Downhill From There....
I thought the premise of this book was terrific. What adoptive parent was doesn't worry and wonder about their child's background? But the book went downhill after a great start.

Several other reviewers have mentioned the "cartoonish" characters and I have to agree.

Too much of a downer for me, after a great beginning.