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Single mother Laney Bird, the heroine of Naymark's promising debut and series launch, gave up her career as an NYPD undercover narcotics detective and moved to Sylvan, N.Y., an idyllic town upstate where she believed her troubled son, Alfie, would be safe. Three years after the two settle in Sylvan, 13-year-old Alfie disappears on his way to school band practice one night, and Laney is forced to realize the Hudson Valley is no safer than the inner city. The school administration assumes this is just one more of the behaviors that already have Alfie on the verge of expulsion. By-the-books cop Ed Boswell is more sympathetic, but he, too, has had to deal with Alfie's acting out in the past. When Laney discovers that Alfie's disappearance is tied to her own past, she must confront a vengeful ex-con as well as what it truly means to be a parent. With each twist and turn, Naymark ratchets up the tension. This is an original, satisfying roller-coaster ride for domestic suspense fans. Agent: Paula Munier, Talcott Notch Literary Services. (Feb.)

A former undercover cop who's already lost her artist husband to divorce and her job to exhaustion searches frantically for her missing son. Naymark, an artist married to an undercover detective, wastes no time launching her first novel with its very first sentence: "Laney Bird's son vanished the night she drove a busload of high school seniors to see Wicked on Broadway." At first Detective Ed Boswell, of the Sylvan Police Department, soft-pedals her concern because 13-year-old Alfie has already run away once before. Gerry Gavin, the principal at Alfie's school, is equally unruffled: After all, it's Laney's 54th visit to his office. But Laney, who traded police work for bus driving when the strain of her job frayed her relationship with the misfit Alfie beyond endurance, has a bad feeling about this time, and of course she's right. Alfie's been kidnapped by Mr. Blue, who's wormed his way into the boy's confidence by supplying him and his friend Jordan Rogers with beer, drugs, and porn and who, as pharmacist Owen Hopper, has a serious grudge against Alfie's mother. Ignoring Boswell's admonition to leave the case to the police, Laney tracks down Alfie's friends, muscles into their homes, demands answers to her pointed questions, and for her trouble, attracts complaints about her behavior. Alfie, convinced that he's utterly on his own, schemes to free himself. Instead of building the kind of tension that opening sentence promised, Naymark keeps looping back to extended flashbacks showing exactly why Owen Hopper emerged from prison determined to inflict a world of hurt on the woman he considers his nemesis. Heartfelt but unsurprising except for a single twist that will shock no one but the hard-used heroine. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.