Dancing In the Dark
Mary Jane Clark
St. Martin's, July 2005, $21.95, 352 pp.
ISBN 0312323158

After her husband was jailed for committing a white collar crime Diane Mayfield, an on air news correspondent who works for Keys Network, is the sole breadwinner for her family. They are all looking forward to a vacation at the Grand Canyon when Diane's boss assigns her a story in Ocean Grove, NJ. Leslie Patterson disappeared for three days and when she was found nobody believed that the young woman was really abducted. The town feels she staged the whole thing to get attention.

Diane is supposed to interview her but when she and her crew arrive a second young woman is also abducted. This time when she is found she is dead because she choked on her own vomit. A former mental patient is arrested and the person who took the second woman never meant for her to die or for anyone to be accused of the murder. A third woman is abducted and Diane's son is in the place where the kidnapper brings the unconscious woman. Diane races against time to rescues her son before another life is snuffed out.

The logic of the kidnapper to shape her abduction to prove that the mental patient is innocent is a great plot device to bring about a dramatic confrontation between the criminal and the reporter. Mary Jane Clark writes a fantastic who-done-it filled with characters who could have committed the crimes because they act in a suspicious manner. There is plenty of action and lots of false leads so that readers won't guess who the real perpetrator is. When the audience discovers that person's identity, they will truly be shocked.

Harriet Klausner