Compulsively Readable Thrillers

Beck's gripping novel opens with every parent's nightmare scenario: On the road in rural Arizona with her two young children, Audra is pulled over by a sheriff on a trumped-up charge and separated from her children, who are being used in a scheme negotiated on the darknet. (Beck leaves the nature of the scheme up to the reader's imagination, which makes the predicament all the creepier.) Audra finds a potential savior in Danny, a reformed gang member who lost a loved one to the same group of deep-pocketed pervs. But she's on her own when it comes to enduring the investigations of corrupt police officers and reporters who have all but decided she killed and buried her children in the desert. Audra's psyche is another obstacle: In confinement, she recalls her history of drug use and how easily she succumbed to an abusive husband ("the hard bead of self-doubt that he had found in her and worked so skillfully"), prompting her to question her mothering skills and scraping away at her conscience and energy. Kids-in-trouble stories tend to pull too hard on the heartstrings, but Beck (aka British crime writer Stuart Neville) keeps his prose flinty, fast and no-nonsense, even as the danger escalates. By the time the novel speeds to the final pages, he's delivered a thriller that's as good at getting into characters' heads as it is at setting you on edge with its twists and turns.