Little Girl Gone

Schmitt, the author of three cozy series under her Laura Childs pseudonym, tries her hand at a thriller with mixed results. Marjorie Sorenson, a human trafficker who kidnaps babies, specializes in creating reborn dolls, constructed to eerily resemble real infants. At a doll show at a Minnesota shopping mall, Marjorie’s booth attracts Susan Darden, the affluent mother of a three-month-old girl, Elizabeth Ann. Marjorie and her creepy son, Ronnie, tail Susan home, and the pair abduct Elizabeth Ann after overpowering a babysitter. Plucky family liaison officer Afton Tangler assists the frantic Susan and her husband with their trauma as the search for the child continues. Meanwhile, Afton can’t help noticing that the lead FBI agent in the case is “tall and lanky with steel gray hair and warm brown eyes the color of precious amber.” The denouement is both predictable and less than plausible in this tale for readers who don’t mind cartoonish villains and gratuitous injections of romance into a grim and disturbing plot line. (July)