Stolen Things (2020, Dutton, paperback, 368 pages, $13.97) by R.H. Herron starts with a bang. Imagine going to your job as a 911 dispatcher and receiving a call from your distraught daughter. This is what happens to Laurie Ahmadi, a former cop, who quickly uses her detective skills to track down the location of her drugged teen daughter, Jojo. Laurie is livid when she discovers that Jojo has been assaulted. It seems incomprehensible to Laurie how her daughter would be anywhere near the home of the former pro football player, Kevin Leeds. When she arrives at Leeds’ home, Laurie soon discovers that Jojo’s best friend, Harper, is missing. Jojo has no idea where Harper might be and she can’t remember the events that led her to be inside Leeds’ house. Worse, the police discover a dead body on the scene. Determined to bring the perpetrator who has harmed her daughter to justice at all costs, Laurie isn’t willing to let the police handle the situation and launches her own investigation.
After her husband, Omid, the Police Chief, collapses under pressure, Laurie decides it is up to her alone to find the missing teen girl. As the hours tick by and Harper isn’t found, Laurie becomes reckless. And as she delves into the events of the night she begins to understand that she doesn’t know her daughter as well as she thought. Among other things, Jojo. is involved in an organization called Citizens Against Police Brutality. Jojo, who longs to be a cop herself, and who is desperate to find her friend, starts meddling in the investigation and uncovers things she never knew about Harper. Jojo understands, just like her mother, that the longer Harper remains missing, the less likely that she’ll be found alive.
Beyond being a page turner, Stolen Things tackles a variety of social issues from racism against Arabs, to gay rights, to police brutality and corruption. The fact that it is set in a Northern California town also adds local interest.
Stolen Things is on par with other novels filled with twists and turns like The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.
R. H. Herron has worked as a 911 dispatcher, and it shows in her deft handling of the subject material in Stolen Things. She is an internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers (under R.H. Herron), mainstream fiction, feminist romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College in Oakland, and has taught writing extension workshops at both U.C. Berkeley and Stanford. She lives in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand with her partner and way too much yarn. According to Publishers Weekly, Stolen Things is “Riveting… Herron is definitely a writer to watch.” I couldn’t agree more.
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