Torres's flat-footed fourth installment in his Luis Gonzalo series (after 2004's Burning Precinct Puerto Rico
) takes a parent's worst nightmare as its grim premise: children are disappearing from the small Puerto Rican town of Angustias. Sheriff Gonzalo is distracted briefly by a red herring—Los Macheteros,
a violent, fringe political group that wants independence from the U.S.—before he's filled with righteous horror at the true nature of the crimes. When Gonzalo's deputy runs down a suspicious car—a chase that ends with the paralysis of the driver and death of his young passenger—and finds child pornography in the car wreck, the lawmen discover that American pedophiles are kidnapping children as sex slaves. Whether readers can stomach gratuitous violence and sexual deviancy will determine their appetite for this crime novel. (Oct.)
