Born in Birmingham, England, Andrew Grant (Run, More Harm Than Good) sets his latest thriller in Birmingham, Ala., a mini-urban sprawl as full of psychopaths, police politics, drugs and prostitutes as any big metropolis. Cooper Devereaux, a loner cop with a history of violence, shadowy criminal ties and disciplinary suspensions, catches a fresh missing-child case with the clock running. He is teamed with former undercover vice detective Jan Loflin, who has her own sketchy past, full of nervous energy, "as if there was too much for her small body to contain, leaving her muscles to burn off the excess like the flares at an oil refinery." Together they interview the parents of missing seven-year-old Ethan Crane, their neighbors and the boy's teachers and friends. Leads are scarce, the press and police brass clamor for progress, and soon the FBI joins the hunt. Both outsiders and cautious with each other, Devereaux and Loflin doggedly chase down a discarded toy here and an eyewitness sighting there while doing their own sleuthing on the side.
While the action zips along in short chapters, which open with the ominously increasing hours since Ethan's disappearance, Grant slowly connects Devereaux's foster care past, Loflin's dark family history and an FBI database revealing a long pattern of similar kidnappings. At first, False Positive is the very manifestation of a whodunit, but it soon becomes an inquiry into whether the destiny of children is genetically cast from violent parents. Grant knows well how to make this work and then leaves us with a delicious surprise twist on the last page. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.