THE SHADOW TRACER

Sarah Keller is a single mother living in Oklahoma with her five-year-old daughter Zoe.  She works as a skip tracer and keeps her life private.  When a school bus accident sends Zoe to hospital, the life that Sarah has built for herself comes crashing down.  Medical tests reveal that Zoe is not Sarah’s daughter.  But who are Zoe’s parents?  And why does Sarah take Zoe and flee the hospital when the truth is revealed?

This is a very tense thriller, and the reason why Sarah is masquerading as Zoe’s mother and why she goes on the run comes out as the tightly-woven plot unfolds.  It soon becomes clear that the police, who are after Sarah for allegedly kidnapping a child, are the least of her worries.

M G Gardiner’s skill in keeping the reader turning the pages is masterful.  Not only is the tension of Sarah and Zoe’s desperate escape – pursued by three different groups of people who are closing in fast – skilfully done, but the story of Zoe’s parentage and how Sarah came to be her guardian is played out through the novel as a series of breadcrumbs thrown to the reader – and to learn the full and final story you have to follow the trail through to the end.

This is a book to read when you’ve got some quiet time to yourself, because once you start reading you aren’t going to want to stop until you get to the end.