When thirteen-year-old Lainey fails to come home from a night out with friends, her disappearance is dismissed by the Coral Springs Police Department as just another disillusioned South Florida teen running away from suburban drama and an unhappy home life.
But Special Agent Bobby Dees, who heads up the department's difficult Crimes Against Children Squad (CAC), is not quite so sure. After a search of Lainey's computer and a frank talk with her best friend reveal the teen was involved in a secret Internet relationship, Bobby suspects Lainey may be the victim of an online predator. And when chilling evidence of other possible victims is sent to a local Miami television station, he fears she may not be the only one.
Bobby will find himself pulled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the most prolific killer he's ever encountered. But will he be able to save Lainey and the others before it's too late?
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[A small, portly man in a white suit, deep purple shirt, and patent leather slip-ons ran around the stage with a microphone in hand, reaching out to touch any one of the hundreds of sweaty palms that waved back and forth before him in the Unity Tree of Everlasting Evangelical Life church auditorium]***
(@HarperCollinsUK, 8 July 2010, paperback, 470 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a psychological thriller, bought from @BarnardosScot)
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I thought this book was just okay for a physiological thriller. The book may have offered something radically different when it was released nine years ago. As it is, I don't feel it has aged well. The subject matter of the book - missing / murdered teenage girls and police racing against time to outwit a serial killer - is common fodder for psychological thrillers and has been done to death now. I've read many books with a similar premise, some of which have been worse than Pretty Little Things and some which have been far superior. Unfortunately, this book sits somewhere in the middle. It's not brilliant but nor is it awful. It's a so-so book.
