Penniless and thousands of dollars in debt, coke addict Peter, once his firm's most promising attorney, begins brokering baby adoptions to pay his creditors and becomes involved in kidnapping and murder.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Though this unfocused, off-kilter mystery by novelist ( Modern Love ) and playwright ( Strokes ) Glass offers shocking events--the switching, kidnapping and sale of an infant at birth--suspense is wanting until the story is well under way. While New Jersey couple Tom and Bettina Dunne await the birth of their first child, Tom's firm dispatches him to the Middle East to investigate a breakdown in its oil refineries. Tom is hospitalized there after an accident, leaving Bettina exposed to the criminal bungling of two dimwitted villains who are as thin, slippery and disposable as plastic spoons. Shoddy lawyer Peter Balkan is a drug addict desperate for cash and dope; he vows to marry gullible receptionist and nurse Isobel if she'll help drug and abduct Bettina and grab the newborn. The pace picks up when Glass documents the anguished viewpoints of the victimized Bettina and of the baby's adoptive mother, Laura, who conceals the means by which the infant came into her care. But the tension slackens when Glass drags in hospital problems that have no bearing on the plot. Overworked psychiatrist Aaron Simon worries that casual sex between staff members and patients might spread the HIV virus, while he debates "the moral and ethical issues of doctors with AIDS." These red herrings reroute the readers' attention to a swarm of irrelevant minor characters, blur the tale's focus and allow the action to dawdle.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Playwright/author Glass has produced a very fine first thriller. When lawyer Peter Balkan finds himself deeply in debt to finance an ever-more-addictive drug habit, he starts to broker adoptions. After a baby dies of a heart defect, Balkan's desperate need for money leads to kidnapping and more death. He forces his lover Isobel, a nurse, to find another baby. Suddenly the lives of six people are intertwined as Peter's evil, cold-blooded disregard for human beings affects them all. The hero, psychiatrist Aaron Stein, helps thwart Balkan just in time. The action moves swiftly and inevitably to an exciting conclusion.
- Marion F. Gallivan, Villa Maria Campus, Gannon Univ., Erie, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Marion F. Gallivan, Villa Maria Campus, Gannon Univ., Erie, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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