White Male Infant [Hardcover]

Barbara D'Amato (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 2002

Surgical pathologist Dooley McSweeny and his wife dearly love the son they adopted from Russia four years ago. But when medical tests indicate that their little boy could not possibly have come from Russia, the couple is plunged into the dark, complex, and emotionally fraught world of international adoption. Who is their son? Where did he come from? How did he come to them? The answers to these questions threaten to destroy their marriage, their happiness—and their lives—as they explode a powder keg of political intrigue.

Editorial Reviews

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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (June 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765300249
• ISBN-13: 978-0765300249
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,531,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Will absolutely cause anxiety to any adoptive parent., September 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: White Male Infant (Hardcover)

Caution:
This Book should not be read by anyone either considering adoption or anyone who has recently completed an adoption! While the story is intriguing and at times gripping, it involves an international baby selling organization that commits the most heinous of all crimes in order to "match" very high paying prospective adoptive couples with their "perfect" baby. As the story unfolds, the reader is sickened and horrified by the callousness of this highly successful "adoption agency" juxtaposed with the vivid descriptions of depraved conditions forced upon orphaned babies in Russia.

Overall, "White Male Infant" is a good mystery story which does alert readers to the very real and desperate plight of waiting babies and children all over the world. However, it also enacts every parents' (both adoptive and biological) worst nightmare and will absolutely cause anxiety to any adoptive parent. Read it with caution!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hits all the hot buttons--but cartoonlike characters limit i, August 14, 2002

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: White Male Infant (Hardcover)

When he discovers that his adopted son could not have been the Russian baby the agency claimed, Dr. Dooley McSweeny fears the worst--that his wonderful child may have been kidnapped to order. The huge fees that agencies charge certainly would provide motivation--especially for beautiful red-headed and green eyed sons. Dooley obsesses over his fears, finally returning to Russia to seek the truth. But can he, or his marriage, survive the truth when he finds it?

With parallel investigations by a news reporter and an FBI agent, Dooley gradually learns the horrible truth--that an adoption agency specializes in finding exactly the kind of baby that infertile couples demand and in turn, it commands fees that range upward of a quarter of a million dollars.

Author Barbara D'Amato taps into the fears of every parent, and every adoptive parent. The concept of using Russia and similar countries for baby-laundering is clever and convincingly portrayed. Dooley's dilemma is horribly real and effectively narrated. Likewise, reporter Gabrielle Coulter's story is compelling--both in her search for the story behind the huge need for international adoption .... In contrast, D'Amato's villains come across as cartoon-like, motivated only by greed and with no moral scruples, or even common sense.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fast Ride!, July 27, 2002

By 

BeachReader (Delaware) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Male Infant (Hardcover)

"White Male Infant" is a timely novel about foreign adoption. While it relies heavily on coincidence, it is still a page-turner and kept me guessing most of the way through.

Dr. Dooley McSweeney is faced with a terrible decision: should he try to find his adoptive son's real parents and risk having to give him back to them? This thought haunts him day and night and he is consumed by fear and anxiety, moving through his days on auto-pilot.

Keeping his wife, Claudia, in the dark, he begins doing research on his own. He then hires investigators and heads to Russia in an attempt to put his demons to rest. When he gets there he meets an undercover FBI team and a CNN investigator whose cameraman was murdered. The plot begins to thicken at this point.

The visits to Russian orphanages described by D'Amato are so painful and horrible that they defy belief, yet I suspect that this is the way many of them are.

In plots that involve a CNN investigation, several murders, kidnappings, a baby-selling cartel, and the FBI, the author puts together a fast-paced medical thriller.