Linda Windsor, Paper Moon

Paper Moon

Linda Windsor

WestBow, Jan 2005, $13.99, 224 pp.

ISBN: 0785260625

In Philadelphia, Caroline Spencer, owner of Little Angels Daycare Center, accompanies her sixteen-year-old daughter Annie on the Edenton Christian High School trip to Mexico. Also on the journey is workaholic Blaine Madison escorting his angry with him daughter Karen, who believes her widowed father has no time for her.

At the Mexico City Banditos Dance Club, college student John Chandler picks up Karen as Blaine angrily watches. John feels guilty because he knows he is using the naive, lonely teen as he has done with others, to bring stolen items into the states, but knows he cannot change horses as his roommate's Uncle Jorge will kill him and perhaps his cute pigeon too. What he never expected was for Jorge to kidnap the two teenage tourists, leaving an irate Blaine and a frightened but praying to God Caroline to try to rescue their daughters as the police seem indifferent and perhaps even terrified to intercede.

Though Caroline is too accident prone in the beginning of the tale (early distracter), fans will appreciate this deep, tense, romantic suspense starring two opposites when it comes to religious beliefs, relationships, and single parenting. The storyline is character-driven as the audience gets to know the Spencers and Madisons up front and close although that delays the action until late in the novel. Still, this is fine tale in which a believer and a non-believer must find the same path to save their daughters from a vile, avarice, soulless fiend.

Harriet Klausner