In Desperation-Rick Mofina

In Desperation
Rick Mofina
Mira, Mar 22 2011, $9.99
ISBN: 9780778329480

In Mexico reporter Jack Gannon investigates a situation when he receives the call from the last person he expected to phone him as he assumed she was dead. From Mesa Mirage, Arizona his sister Cora Martin, who has not spoken to him in two decades, begs him to help her. Someone kidnapped her tweener daughter Tilly demanding five million in five days that they insist her boss at Quick Draw Courier stole from them or the eleven years old child will be dead. Afraid to turn to the cops, frantic Cora pleads with her sibling to find her.

Fuming at her deception, Gannon works closely with the FBI while wondering why his sibling was apparently in hiding all these years and from who; the likely kidnapper. To his surprise he begins to find a tie to his Mexican investigation as time is running out on a niece he has never met.

This excellent thriller is loaded with suspense that feels real especially the reactions by the two siblings as they deal with her San Francisco “mistake” that led to her vanishing and her boss’ rip off of the laundered money from the Mexican Norte Cartel that led to the abduction. While the days count down in a death watch, readers will appreciate this powerful fast-paced tale in which a family reunion appears deadly; summed up by Jack that nothing truly breaks the basic law of economics in which we demand drugs and the cartels supply them.

Harriet Klausner